Re: sound change

At 12:03 pm -0400 8/5/01, Vasiliy Chernov wrote:
>On Tue, 8 May 2001 15:40:24 +1000, Tristan Alexander McLeay
><zsau@...> wrote:
>
>>This led me to thinking about OE /a:/ to ME things.
>>
>>OE /a:n/ became PDE /wVn/, presumably via ME /O:n/ (judging by its
>>spelling). Does anyone know why?
>
>Usually explained as a dialectal loan (indeed, there were dialects
>where ME O: > wO(:);
This is true, and such dialects were still current in southern English
right up till the 20th century.  It certainly happened in those dialects,
like the old Suusex dialect, where ME /O:/ --> /u@/; when initial the sound
become /wu@/ or simply /w@/.

>BTW, the speling of _whole_ is influenced by such
>dialectal pronunciaton).
Indeed it is.

>>OE /hwa:m/ became PDE /hu:m/, presumably via ME /hwo:m/
>
>Same with _who_, _whose_.
>
>Can be analyzed as regular change in late ME: [CwO:] > [Co:] (the other
>example being _two_;
I'm sure this is correct.

Up north where Old English /a:/ became /e/, we have Scots _twae_  :)

[snip]

>
>>OE /na:m/ became PDE /neim/
>
>I thought it had short [a] in OE, secondary [a:] in ME (like in _make_,
>etc.). No?
Yes, you absolutely correct.

>>And yet the general given sound change is OE /a:/ > ME /O:/ > PDE /@u/.
This is the sound change for Old English _long_ /a:/.  In many Brit English
dialects the resultant change is /o/, but /@u/ is regarded as standard.
But in northern dialects, it became /e/ as in Scots _hame_ (home).

But _name_ is from Old Eng. _nama_ with short /a/ in both syllables.  The
sound was lengthened in the open syllable in the Middle English, not the
Old English period; and ME /na:m@/ becomes Mod. English /nem/ ([ne:m],
[neim]) etc in the regular way.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================