[gothic-l] Re: Proto Germanic Vowels

[David Salo]

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Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>: David Salo <dsalo at softhome.net> wrote:-
>>    It's interesting to note that, because of continuing assimilations and
>> dissimilations related to the initial w-, the word for "wolf" in this
>> history of English has changed from [wolf] to [wulf] and back multiple
>> times since Pre-Germanic: PGmc *wulfa- > CGmc *wolfa- > OE wulf > ME
>> wolf(e) > ModE [wulf] (still spelled "wolf"!); but German retains Wolf <
>> CGmc *wolfa unchanged.
>
>  I thought that:-
>  - Common Gmc had no short {o} or long (a), because PIE short {o} and long
>{a} became short (a) and long (o).

   I alluded to this change a few paragraphs up from the paragraph you
cited.  I also pointed out that Common Germanic produced (_after_ this
change) a new *o from *u in certain environments.

>  - The PIE for "wolf" was {wlqwos}, and the L was a vowel.

   I represented that pronunciation in my message, again, a few paragraphs
up, as *wLkwo- (using the stem without the masculine nominative ending).
However, PGmc *wulfa- cannot come directly from *wLkwo-, as that would
produce *wulhwa-; either it comes from a dialectal form *wLpo-, or *wulhwa-
had been altered early to *wulfa-. There are other notable cases where
Germanic shows a labial instead of a labiovelar, e.g. the numbers four and
five (*feðwo:r- not **hweðwo:r-, *femf- not *fenhw-).

>  - English {wulf} has stayed unchanged right through. The English frequent
>habit of spelling short {u} as if it was long (o) is not due to pronunciation
>but was to resolve reading ambiguities caused by the deficiencies of
>mediaavel
>styles of handwriting whereby some lowercase letters (i u/v w n m) if not
>written very carefully tend to look on the page like a long undifferentiated
>sequence of dot-less i's. Likewise e.g. "honey" for **"hunny".

   While there are certainly cases where "u" was written "o"
orthographically without a change in sound, there is good evidence that OE
wu- became ME wo-; for instance,

   OE wudu > ME wode [wo:d@] > ModE wood
   OE wull > ME wolle [wo:ll@] > ModE wool
   OE wunod > ME woned [wo:ne at d] > ModE wont

   As the double o in the modern spellings of the first two words
indicates, the quality of the "o" in Middle English was possibly long and
probably close, and so must have been distinct from short u.  "Wont" shows
a shorter form of this o which has not been changed.

   In OE wund > ME wound [wu:nd] > ModE wound [wund], evidently the usual
lengthening of high vowels before nasal+consonant (as in find, mind, climb,
bound, ground; the failure of Standard ModE to change [wu:nd] to [waund] is
accidental, as such a pronunciation does occur in non-standard dialects)
occurred before the Middle English change of wu- > wo-.
   I do not know all of the details and constraints involved in this
change, but I think that the same alteration of wu- > wo- had occurred in
the word "wolf".

/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
<dsalo at softhome.net> <>



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