Yive (was: Re: GROUPLANG: optional features and case)

At 8:08 am -0400 20/10/98, Nik Taylor wrote:
.......
>A similar case is the word _give_, which may be related to the Latin
>_habere_, to have.  Speaking of _give_, I was under the impression that
>/g/ regularly changed to /j/ before front vowels, so why isn't it "yive"
>or something similar?
'Twas so in Chaucer and the middle English of southern England.  The modern
form is one of the Scandinavianisms of northern English.  Although the
modern continental Scandinavians now soften the initial {g} to /j/ before
/i/, their forebears who inhabited the Danelaw still retain the hard sounds
of /g/ and /k/.

Ray.