From LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU Sat Sep 7 12:14:48 1996 From: LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU (L-Soft list server at U. of South Carolina (1.8b)) Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 08:14:48 EDT Subject: HISTLING: approval required (0DAB85) Message-ID: ------------------------ Original message (44 lines) -------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from UNIVSCVM (NJE origin SMTP at UNIVSCVM) by VM.SC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8 a) with BSMTP id 6687; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 09:47:25 -0400 Received: from curlew.cs.man.ac.uk by VM.SC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Fri, 06 Sep 96 09:47:20 EDT Received: from fs1.art.man.ac.uk by curlew.cs.man.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Fri, 6 Sep 1996 14:37:57 +0100 Received: from MAN-ART-FS1/SpoolDir by fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Mercury 1.21); 6 Sep 96 14:37:33 GMT0BST Received: from SpoolDir by MAN-ART-FS1 (Mercury 1.21); 6 Sep 96 14:37:14 GMT0BST From: David Denison Organization: Faculty of Arts To: linguist at tamvm1.tamu.edu, HISTLING at UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 14:37:11 GMT0BST Subject: 10th ICEHL, August 1998 Reply-to: d.denison at man.ac.uk Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22 Message-ID: <5EA26A171DF at fs1.art.man.ac.uk> *** preliminary announcement *** The 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics will be held in Manchester in August 1998. Our preferred dates - still provisional - are: Friday 21 August to either Tuesday 25 or Wednesday 26 August 1998. If you know of any significant potential problems or clashes, please e-mail me immediately at the conference e-mail address: 10icehl at man.ac.uk I expect to confirm the date shortly. Our still rudimentary WWW page will be regularly updated over the next few months: http://www.art.man.ac.uk/english/10icehl.htm David Denison, organiser _____________________________________ David Denison e-mail: d.denison at man.ac.uk Dept of English and American Studies tel. +44 161-275 3154 University of Manchester fax. +44 161-275 3256 Manchester M13 9PL, UK. From LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU Wed Sep 11 12:03:13 1996 From: LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU (L-Soft list server at U. of South Carolina (1.8b)) Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 08:03:13 EDT Subject: HISTLING: approval required (2C3DEF) Message-ID: ------------------------ Original message (31 lines) -------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from UNIVSCVM (NJE origin SMTP at UNIVSCVM) by VM.SC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8 a) with BSMTP id 8072; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 06:10:47 -0400 Received: from rsuna.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk by VM.SC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Mon, 09 Sep 96 06:10:43 EDT Received: by rsuna.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk (Smail3.1.29.1 #3) id m0v03HG-00005IC; Mon, 9 Sep 96 11:09 BST Message-Id: Subject: Portuguese _cotovelo_ `elbow' To: histling at univscvm.csd.scarolina.edu (histling list) Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 11:09:14 +0100 (BST) From: "Larry Trask" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 386 Meyer-Luebke's REW explains Portuguese _cotovelo_ `elbow' as a loan from Arabic _qobtal_ `elbow', itself a loan from Latin _cubitalis_ `an ell long', a derivative of Latin _cubitum_ `elbow'. Can anyone tell me if this roundabout etymology, with its Arabic mediation, is generally accepted today? Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Thu Sep 12 12:58:45 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 13:58:45 +0100 Subject: HL textbook Message-ID: Several subscribers have asked to be notified when my textbook was published. Since I can no longer remember who they all were, I'm taking the liberty of using this list. The book is now out in Britain. It's this: R. L. Trask. 1996. Historical Linguistics. London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-340-60758-0 (pb), 0-340-66295-6 (hb). 430 pp. The paperback sells for 16.99 pounds in Britain (I think). That's about US $25, though the American price may actually be lower, given the peculiar way that publishers do things. No doubt it'll take a few weeks for copies to be shipped across the pond. The book is distributed in the USA by St, Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, NY 10010. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From jeff.marck at anu.edu.au Fri Sep 13 13:37:19 1996 From: jeff.marck at anu.edu.au (Jeff Marck) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 14:37:19 +0100 Subject: Phylogeny and "Sharing" versus "Borrowing" Message-ID: Histling and Arcling Subscribers: The demise of a common language between Tonga and Samoa seems to have occurred slowly during a period from about 1000 B.C. when those islands were first settled, through the first millenium B.C. when they were apparently sharing the innovations that came to mark Proto Polynesian, and then sharing seems to have declined significantly by about the time of the divergence of Eastern Polynesian with numerous innovations marking it as more like ancient Samoan than ancient Tongan. Had Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean, not emerged out of the Western Polynesian heartland, the measure of whether ancient Tongan and Samoan were "sharing innovations" or "borrowing", it seems to me, would have been the point at which the phonologies were different enough that certain sounds were no longer being shared according to patterns of regular inheritance from the proto language. However, with the divergence of Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean, it seems to me that there is a phylogenetic principle that says the sharings of ancient Tongan and Samoan prior to those other divergences were "shared innovations" (if unmarked by irregular sound correspondences) while any sharings after those divergences are formally "borrowings". I don't immediately find relevant discussions in Hoch, etc. and some of my favourite historical linguistics web sites seem to be down at the moment. I would appreciate any suggestions on relevant areal (any language family) and theoretical titles. I find that the archaeologists are quite grateful for clarification when I point out that what we call "sharing" in one instance and "borrowing" in the next is a linguistic formalism having to do with how the phylogeny is constructed and implies no discontinuity in the social processes current between Tonga and Samoa at the time of the divergence of Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean. Jeff Marck Linguistics-RSPAS-ANU ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Marck Publications Officer HTC-NCEPH-ANU Health Transition Centre Canberra ACT 0200 Australia National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Australian National University jeff.marck at anu.edu.au Voice:61-6-249-5618 (5614(fax)) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Health Transition Review: Dedicated to understanding the cultural, social and behavioural determinants of health. http://www-nceph.anu.edu.au/htc/htr.htm (back and current issues on-line) ------------------------------------------------------------------- From lonhyn at nas.nasa.gov Fri Sep 13 01:37:33 1996 From: lonhyn at nas.nasa.gov (Lonhyn T. Jasinskyj) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 18:37:33 -0700 Subject: Historical phonetics: "wh" --> {"w", "hw"} Message-ID: Could anyone point me to some material on the origin of the English "wh" (as in "wheat", "which", etc.) and how the two alternate pronunciations ("w" and "hw" came about)? This subject occupied all of dinner last night and a good bit of poking around today. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks, Lonhyn From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Sep 13 15:17:10 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:17:10 +0100 Subject: English /hw-/ > /w-/ Message-ID: Lonhyn Jasinsky asks about the reduction of English /hw-/ to /w-/. Since I can't find his e-mail address in the posting, I'm replying to the list. Proto-Indo-European */k/ developed regularly to /h/ (or /x/, if you prefer) in the Germanic languages, by the First Germanic Consonant Shift (Grimm's Law). The resulting fricative was generally pronounced [h] in syllable-initial position but [x] in syllable-final position, much as in modern German. The PIE initial cluster */kw-/ accordingly developed in Old English into /hw-/: hence, for example, Old English `what' and `wheat'. The spelling was changed after the Norman conquest, apparently under Norman influence, to the modern , and hence orthographic and . The pronunciation remained /hw-/ in England for centuries, at least for most speakers. In the south of England, though, the phonetically natural reduction to /w-/ is attested from the early Middle English period, but this reduction remained a vulgarism for centuries afterward; it did not spread widely, and it did not reach educated speech. Accordingly, the nearly universal pronunciation /hw-/ was carried to North America in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, the innovating pronunciation /w-/ began spreading rapidly in England, even into educated speech; by 1800, /w-/ was firmly established as the norm in England. Today, /w-/ is universal in England and Wales (except in Northumberland), even in the most careful and prestigious speech, though a few teachers of elocution and drama still try to to inculcate the /hw-/ pronunciation, which is still often perceived as elegant. In Scotland, though, /hw-/ remains universal. The Linguistic Atlas of the Eastern USA, compiled over a generation ago, shows /hw-/ as normal in most places, with /w-/ the norm in just three areas, all of them on the east coast: a large area centered on metropolitan New York, and two smaller ones centered on Boston and Charleston/Savannah. This distribution strongly suggests that /w-/ was introduced from England into these port cities and began spreading out from there. In the last generation, the innovating /w-/ has been spreading across the USA with astounding speed. The American linguist William Bright recently told me (p.c.) that /hw-/ was now confined to "a handful of old fogies". I myself (I'm from western New York State) have /hw-/, like my parents, but my two brothers and my sister (all younger) have only /w-/. My mother is acutely conscious of this; she notices the /w-/ of the young people and regards it as objectionable. There's a brief survey with references in vol. 1, section 3.2.4, of John Wells (1982), Accents of English, CUP. Useful intros to /h/-dropping generally in English are these two: James Milroy (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change. Blackwell. [section 5.5] James Milroy (1983). `On the sociolinguistic history of /h/-dropping in English'. In M. Davenport et al (eds), Current Topics in English Historical Linguistics, pp. 37-53. Odense University Press. But these two deal with h-dropping in general, and not explicitly with /hw-/. I might note that the Old English initial clusters /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, as in `loud', `ring', and `nut', lost their /h/ completely at a fairly early stage, and hence the reduction of /hw-/ to /w-/ can be seen as a continuation of a venerable process of reduction of such clusters. We are left only with /hj-/, as in , but even here there is abundant evidence of the sporadic or regional loss of /h/ in a number of varieties on both sides of the Atlantic. (In my own accent, /hju:/ has become something like /hIw/, and similarly for other such words, and hence no longer rhymes with or .) Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From swatts at tcd.ie Fri Sep 13 16:19:46 1996 From: swatts at tcd.ie (Sheila Watts) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 17:19:46 +0100 Subject: HW Message-ID: Larry Trask managed to mention large swathes of the English-speaking world, but not Ireland, where, as in Scotland, /hw-/ is universal. Sheila Watts ======================================================= Dr. Sheila Watts Department of Germanic Studies Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland Phone: 353-1-6081894 Fax: 353-1-677 2694 From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Sep 13 16:40:27 1996 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (ALICE FABER) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 12:40:27 -0400 Subject: /hw/, /hj/ Message-ID: Yet another addendum to Larry Trask's summary of the distribution of a /hw/-/w/ contrast in the English-speaking world. This summary included, in passing a mention of /hj/ (as in _huge_, _Hugh_). In New York City (which Larry mentioned as one of the focal areas in the US for the neutralization of /hw/-/w/), /hj/-/j/ is likewise neutralized, so that _Hugh_ and _you_ are (identically) [ju]. Alice Faber faber at haskins.yale.edu From tvn at cis.uni-muenchen.de Fri Sep 13 21:30:28 1996 From: tvn at cis.uni-muenchen.de (Theo Vennemann) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 22:30:28 +0100 Subject: hw- > w- in English Message-ID: Dear Fellow Linguists: A succinct treatment of the development hw- > w- in English, with many refernces, is A. Lutz, Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonanten- veraenderungen in der Geschichte des Englischen, Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer, 1991, pp. 45-56, with hj- > j- pp. 57-59, h- > zero before vowels pp. 59-67. This is in a chapter on the loss of English h in all positions, pp. 19-73. Mit freundlichen Gruessen, Theo Vennemann. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Sat Sep 14 15:00:10 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:00:10 +0100 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is still taken seriously?) But I don't think we can really tell whether OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. Likewise, he is probably right to suggest that OE /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/ were most likely voiceless resonants at the phonetic level, but again I don't think we can be certain that that's what they were phonologically. I would make three points. First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these three, if not for /hw-/. Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as clusters. Third, I myself "feel" my /hw-/ to be a cluster of /h/ + /w/, and have felt the same since childhood, when I first noticed that English had phonemes -- even if the phoneticians tell me that I'm actually producing a single segment, a voiceless glide. The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster interpretation, but is hardly decisive. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mcv at pi.net Sun Sep 15 09:27:21 1996 From: mcv at pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 02:27:21 PDT Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: >Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists >consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, >a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally >seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between >a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is >still taken seriously?) I haven't seen Mark Hale's message, so I don't know if he distinguishes between /kw/ and /k^w/ (palatalized velar). If /k^w/ counts, there is certainly reason to assume it had a separate, albeit marginal existence in PIE. It has distinct, and sometimes rather bizarre reflexes in at least Indo-Iranian, Greek, Balto-Slavic and possibly Armenian and Anatolian: Skt. s'v (s'va^ "dog") Av. sp (spa^ "dog") Arm. s^ (s^un "dog") Grk. pp, tt, kk (hippos/ikkos "horse", kittanos/titanos "chalk") Lit. s^v (s^viec^iu` "to shine") Slv. sv (svet "light, beside kve^t-/cve^t- "flower") Gamkrelidze and Ivanov posit a sound law in Anatolian to the effect that *k^w > s(w) (Hitt. s^uwa- "to fill", Luw. suwanai "dogs"). The case for /kw/ is weaker, but Latin ca^seus "cheese" [Pok.: "(von *ca^so- aus *kwa^t-so- [cf.] abg. kvasU; das Fehlen des -w- harrt noch der Erklaerung)" and vapor (*kwapo^s, cf. also Grk. kapnos) are at least remarkable. Balto-Slavic /kv/ instead of /k/ (or /s^v/) seems due to the usual B-S confusion over *k^ vs. *k . >But I don't think we can really tell whether >OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. It was certainly not deemed worthy of a separate symbol, as were (wynn), (thorn) and (ash). Or in Gothic, for that matter. That leaves the question of why the Norman clerks decided to change the spelling to (cf. , , ). I assume it was to reflect the pronunciation [W] (unvoiced labio-velar appr.), whether it was still /hw/ for the English or not. ------------------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at pi.net ------------------------------------- From hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca Sun Sep 15 22:05:30 1996 From: hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca (Mark Hale) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 18:05:30 -0400 Subject: English /hw-/ > /w-/ Message-ID: I apparently inadvertently sent this only to Prof. Trask: >Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:59:20 -0400 >To: Larry Trask >From: Mark Hale >Subject: Re: English /hw-/ > /w-/ > > >Just two further notes on Trask's /hw-/ > /w-/ observations. First, its >Indo-European source does not contain a "cluster" *kw- but rather a >unitary labiovelar segment. There is no reason to believe its OE >descendent is anything but a single segment. Second, OE /hw/ (and /hl/, /hr/, /hn/, etc.) >were almost certainly initial voiceless resonants (rather than sequences). >The change involved is that from voiceless resonant > voiced resonant (not >"cluster simplification" and not "h-loss"). > >Mark > From hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca Sun Sep 15 22:17:14 1996 From: hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca (Mark Hale) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 18:17:14 -0400 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: At 04:00 PM 9/14/96 +0100, Prof. Trask wrote: >Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists >consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, >a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally >seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between >a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is >still taken seriously?) But I don't think we can really tell whether >OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. As far as I know the existence of a contrast between [kW] (a labiovelar) and sequences of the type /k/ + /w/ (similarly for the voiced and voiced aspirated series) is universally accepted by IEists. The ancestor of the /hw/ of 'what' is a labiovelar. >Likewise, he is probably right to suggest that OE /hl-/, /hr-/, and >/hn-/ were most likely voiceless resonants at the phonetic level, but >again I don't think we can be certain that that's what they were >phonologically. > >I would make three points. > >First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to >derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has >certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these >three, if not for /hw-/. Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic phonological status of segments. >Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely >alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting >that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as >clusters. As the vowels show, alliteration is feature-driven, rather than segment-driven. The alliteration facts point to some phonetic similarity between the segments, but not to identity. >Third, I myself "feel" my /hw-/ to be a cluster of /h/ + /w/, and >have felt the same since childhood, when I first noticed that English >had phonemes -- even if the phoneticians tell me that I'm actually >producing a single segment, a voiceless glide. Prof. Trask's "feelings" are, unfortunately, also non-probative, no matter when he started feeling them. They are non-probative for the Modern English dialect he speaks, and completely irrelevant to the question of the status of /hw/ in Old English. Even if Prof. Trask were *considerably* older than he appears. >The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >interpretation, but is hardly decisive. *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. I agree with Prof. Trask that the matter is not completely determinable by the evidence. But we should distinguish between arguments which might in principle support a particular analysis and those which are in fact not relevant. Mark From mcv at pi.net Mon Sep 16 18:08:53 1996 From: mcv at pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:08:53 PDT Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: Mark Hale wrote: >At 04:00 PM 9/14/96 +0100, Prof. Trask wrote: >>First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to >>derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has >>certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these >>three, if not for /hw-/. > >Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic >phonological status of segments. Synchronic when? We can be pretty confident that there was a cluster, synchronically, in PIE *klu^tos. There is none, synchronically, in English "loud". There is of course, by definition, no such thing as synchronical "cluster reduction", or diachronical "phonological status". >>The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >>interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > >*hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely irrelevant' would >be closer to the mark, in my view. Since all we can know about OE necessarily comes to us through OE spelling, I would hesitate to call OE spelling "completely irrelevant". ------------------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at pi.net ------------------------------------- From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Sep 16 09:49:28 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 10:49:28 +0100 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ once more Message-ID: Well, I failed to notice that Mark Hale's posting, to which I replied on this list, had been sent only to me. My response must have bewildered quite a few people; apologies. Apparently it's now impossible to post to the list by using a `reply' option. > As far as I know the existence of a contrast between [kW] (a > labiovelar) and sequences of the type /k/ + /w/ (similarly for the > voiced and voiced aspirated series) is universally accepted by > IEists. The ancestor of the /hw/ of 'what' is a labiovelar. Thanks. The recent discussions of PIE phonology I've seen have concentrated on other and more exciting issues, and I haven't seen a view expressed on this point for years. [On my point that OE /hl-/ derives from PIE */kl-/, and so on] > Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic > phonological status of segments. Agreed, of course, but then I wasn't suggesting that that the PIE origin proved anything about Old English -- only that it shows that cluster reduction must have occurred at some time. >> Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely >> alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting >> that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as >> clusters. > As the vowels show, alliteration is feature-driven, rather than > segment-driven. The alliteration facts point to some phonetic > similarity between the segments, but not to identity. Well, I'm perfectly prepared to accept a featural element in alliteration, if the evidence points that way. But surely it is going too far simply to declare that "alliteration is feature-driven", and that's all there is to it. As far as I can see, a segmental interpretation of OE alliteration is a lot simpler and more successful than a feature-based one. I don't think the alliteration of vowels is a strong argument for a feature-based view: it's just that zero onsets alliterated, and unsurprisingly so. How does it clarify matters to bring the vowels into it? Anyway, what would have been the featural basis of the alliteration of the five onsets in question? We have alliteration among /h-/ (a voiceless vowel, probably, though conceivably a fricative), /hw-/ (perhaps a voiceless glide, probably a fricative), /hl-/ (a voiceless lateral), /hr-/ (a voiceless rhotic), and /hn-/ (a voiceless nasal). The only feature these obviously have in common is [- voice] -- but other voiceless segments don't alliterate with any of these, or with one another. If you are happy to deny fricative status to the first two, then you could point to [- voice, - obstruent] as the class in question. But this looks fishy to me. First, I'm aware of no evidence that these five items behaved as a natural class in any other respect in Old English. Second, none of the parallel groups [- voi, + obstr], [+ voi, + obstr], or [+ voi, - obstr] alliterate in Old English. I therefore don't find it easy to agree, with Mark, that "The alliteration facts point to some phonetic similarity between the segments, but not to identity." Are there other cases in OE of alliteration between onsets which share some phonetic similarity but not identity? [on my intuition that my onset is phonologically /hw-/] > Prof. Trask's "feelings" are, unfortunately, also non-probative, no > matter when he started feeling them. They are non-probative for the > Modern English dialect he speaks, and completely irrelevant to the > question of the status of /hw/ in Old English. Even if Prof. Trask > were *considerably* older than he appears. I don't know how old I appear, but I think some of my younger students have the vague impression I've been around since the Bronze Age :-) Hell, even one of my British colleagues once asked me in all seriousness what it was like watching Joe DiMaggio play. Honestly. But I digress. Of course I agree that my intuitions don't prove a phonological analysis -- but I don't think they're irrelevant, either. My point is that it's perfectly possible for speakers to perceive their speech in phonological terms which are at odds with the phonetics -- the same point made so famously by Sapir over 70 years ago. Hence, even if we had ironclad evidence that the onsets in question were phonetically single segments in OE (and we don't, of course), such evidence would not prove that they were not clusters phonologically. >> The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >> interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely > irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. Well, no. I'm afraid I can't agree that the orthography established by native speakers is "completely irrelevant" to the phonological facts of a language. If that were true, orthographies would be totally arbitrary, and they're clearly not. Of course the orthography doesn't prove anything, but, as Miguel Carrasquer Vidal has pointed out, it's interesting that OE-speakers never showed any tendency to represent these onsets with single letters. > I agree with Prof. Trask that the matter is not completely > determinable by the evidence. But we should distinguish between > arguments which might in principle support a particular analysis and > those which are in fact not relevant. Yes, I am in full agreement with Mark here. But I can't see that I've raised any irrelevant arguments. Once again, my points are these: Etymology: three of the four onsets originated as clusters. Alliteration: the alliteration facts are clearly more compatible with a cluster analysis of all four onsets than with a single-segment analysis. Intuition: at least some modern speakers perceive /hw-/ as a cluster, in defiance of the phonetics, and therefore purely phonetic facts about OE, even if we had any, would not in principle count against the cluster analysis. Orthography: this is not inconsistent with either analysis, but is more directly supportive of the cluster analysis. I'll remind everybody that I was only trying to give a simple answer to a question about the /hw-/ ~ /w-/ variation in mondern English, and not proposing a serious analysis of Old English phonology. But, if I were to undertake this last task, I think I would probably conclude that, while the evidence available is not decisive, a cluster analysis looks more attractive than a single-segment analysis. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From MFCEPRH at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Mon Sep 16 09:12:23 1996 From: MFCEPRH at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard M Hogg) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 09:12:23 GMT0BST Subject: English /hw/ > /w-/ Message-ID: The cluster vs single segment argument about is less open and shut than Mark Hale suggests. Fundamentally, he cannot dismiss the evidence of alliteration so easily. That all vowels apparently alliterate with one another is explicable as alliteration of zero onsets (ie, vowels don't alliterate, initial consonants do, even when they're zero). And the ability of, say,< hw> and
to alliterate with one another is in sharp contrast to the behaviour of . Whether we analyse, say, , as /xw/ or voiceless /w/ may not be decidable, and it seems best to acknowledge that both possibilities have considerable merit (sorry to be so spineless). On Miguel Vidal's question about the spelling shift, I seem to recall that Mosse explained the shift from to (etc.) as a readjustment to conform with the standard Anglo-Norman digraphic sequences of consonant + , as in , . That seems very probable, especially if at the time the special sounds represented by were being lost. But if this is so, the spelling change has no phonological or phonetic significance. Finally I don't think that Mark Hale should be quite so dismissive of spelling evidence as he is when he says OE spelling evidence is "completely irrelevant". A large part of our task is to reconcile plausibly reasonable phonological analyses with actual spellings and we should never give up on that. From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Mon Sep 16 16:28:06 1996 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:28:06 EDT Subject: posting to HISTLING Message-ID: Dear fellow HISTLINGers, Today Larry Trask commented about not being able to post to the entire list by using the function. That's the way HISTLING has operated since I started the list a year ago. Actually, for the first few days it operated with the default of , which meant that every time one used the function, it went to the entire list. By popular demand (and I really do mean _demand_, I had the list changed so that function only goes to the sender, not the entire list. That way, everyone's mailbox is not filled with personal comments and the like. Now that the list is moderated, whenever you post to HISTLING, you will receive an automatic notification from our listserver that the posting has been sent to the listowner (that's me) for approval. I then resend the posting to the entire list as soon as I see it. I do, however, reserve the right not to re-post messages that have nothing to do with language history in the loosest sense of the word, messages that are summaries of discussions on other lists, or messages that do not follow the usual rules of professional discourse. Dorothy Disterheft From rhpwri at liverpool.ac.uk Tue Sep 17 09:39:30 1996 From: rhpwri at liverpool.ac.uk (Dr R.H.P. Wright) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 10:39:30 +0100 Subject: relevance of orthography Message-ID: In the last mail Larry Trask said: > > >> The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster > >> interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > > > *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely > > irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. > > Well, no. I'm afraid I can't agree that the orthography established > by native speakers is "completely irrelevant" to the phonological > facts of a language. If that were true, orthographies would be > totally arbitrary, and they're clearly not. Doesn't it depend how old the establishment of the standard orthography is? We can presume that to some extent there is a rationale behind the establishment of a new orthography (and often that rationale is of a phonographic nature, but not necessarily), so we can make some rough deductions from spellings found at such a time of reform; but once the orthography has become standardized in itself, later generations tend to perceive their task in writing as achieving the standardized spellings of words (in a logographic manner) rather than achieving a written form close to a phonetic transcription. Nobody, unfortunately, writes with the aim of helping philologists of a thousand years later. - RW From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca Tue Sep 17 19:13:12 1996 From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 16:43:12 -0230 Subject: English /hw/ > /w-/ In-Reply-To: <6D4C3C670C5@fs1.art.man.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Richard M Hogg wrote: > The cluster vs single segment argument about is less > open and shut than Mark Hale suggests. Fundamentally, he cannot > dismiss the evidence of alliteration so easily. That all vowels > apparently alliterate with one another is explicable as alliteration > of zero onsets (ie, vowels don't alliterate, initial consonants do, > even when they're zero). And the ability of, say,< hw> and
to > alliterate with one another is in sharp contrast to the behaviour of > . The orthography of Ancient Greek supports Richard Hogg's analysis. Initial [h], described as "rough breathing", was marked as a diacritic _c_, not with a letter of the alphabet. Zero onset before a vowel, described by the ancient grammarians as "smooth breathing", was likewise marked with a diacritic, not with a letter of the alphabet. The orthography indicates that the Greeks considered initial aspiration vs. zero as onset phenomena, not as regular phonemes. Since [h] only occurred initially (although it prompted sandhi phenomena) this is an appropriate way to treat it. (J.R.Firth is probably sitting up in his grave saying "I told you so"!) Initial [h] therefore constitutes a variety of problems. I suspect that with the loss of post vocalic [h] in EMnE we are looking at onset phenomena in MnE, with [hj] and [hw] showing the possibilities of onset before semi-vowels as well as before full vowels. John Hewson Memorial University of Newfoundland From lan300 at aixrs1.hrz.uni-essen.de Wed Sep 18 18:28:15 1996 From: lan300 at aixrs1.hrz.uni-essen.de (Prof. Dr. R. Hickey) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 14:28:15 EDT Subject: posting to HISTLING[D[D[D In-Reply-To: from "Dorothy Disterheft" at Sep 16, 96 12:28:06 pm Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Email title: /hw/ - /w/ and syllable structure Date: 17 September 1996 Time: 00:36:21 To: HistLing subscribers via owner-histling at VM.SC.EDU From: Hickey, Raymond r.hickey at uni-essen.de Cluster analysis of single phonetic segments ============================================ Have I overlooked somebody's comments in the current discussion about - or can it really be that no-one has considered structural arguments here? To remind ourselves: we are dealing here with phonetic reality and phonological postulations. Phonetic segments are there, i.e. for Irish, Scottish and most American speakers of English in a word like _which_ there IS a lack of voice during the approximant which contrasts with the voice which IS present in a word like _witch_. The next question in whether, in the abstract analysis of the place this sound has in the system of English phonology, we assume two segments /h/ + /w/ or just one /W/. On this level there is (as yet) no question of proving existence. The ontological status of phonological postulates is another issue which the linguist cannot address, given the inability to link any of the analyses we make with any level of mental activity. Other considerations determine the type of analysis we offer: symmetry and balance in the system we construe, simplicity (parsimoniousness of design, keeping to Occam's razor, etc.), maximum explanatory power of single constructs (free-rides and the like). Sorry, all this is rather platitudinous to those in the field, but it should nonetheless be borne in mind. Now there is strong system-based evidence for the analysis of [W] (voiceless labiovelar approximant), in those varieties of English which still have it, as consisting of two segments (segment = a phonological unit which does, if biuniqueness applies, correspond to a phonetically identifiable sound, but does not have to). You might think to begin with that /w - W/ form a voiced - voiceless pair in English like /s - z, t - d, p - b/, etc. However in my opinion, the arguments for [W] as /h/ + /w/ are more compelling; here they are. 1) /hw/ and /h/ in general =========================== The first segment in /hw/ which one can posit phonologically correlates with /h/ word initially, that is to postulate /h/ + /w/ has additional justification in the fact that /h/ occurs initially anyway (in varieties with [W]). Conversely, to my knowledge no variety of English which has /h/-dropping also has [W]. i.e. lack of /h-/ precludes the cluster /hw-/. 2) Position in syllable ======================== It is a standard wisdom on syllable structure that there is in general an increase of sonority from edge to centre. Analysing [W] as /hw/ means that one has an obstruent /h/, then a semi-vowel (a continuant with very open articulation) /w/ and a following vowel which is in keeping with this cline. Note that this same argument can be used to support an analysis of [Cu:] (C = voiceless palatal fricative) in English _hue_ as /hju:/ : obstruent, semi-vowel, vowel with increasing sonority from beginning of onset to nucleus. I take it that I don't have to offer too much justification for regarding /j/ and /w/ as semi-vowels, they are high front and high back glides respectively and have been regularly posited as diphthong end-points in American phonology since the early structuralists and are seen PHONETICALLY as glides in hiatus, e.g. _seeing_ [si:jiN] and _doing_ [du:wiN]. 3) Markedness considerations ============================= Cross-linguistic observations hav lead in phonology to many valid statements treated under the heading `markedness' (understood statistically here). Thus voice is unmarked for vowels, semi-vowels and sonorants just as voicelessness is for obstruents, i.e. there are (far) more languages with voiced sonorants that with voiceless ones as well and there are (slightly) more languages with voiceless fricatives than with voiced ones as well. Now English of course does not have voiceless sonorants (systemically) so that to posit [W] would mean that there would be an unevenness in the distribution of voice, compare the following charts. [W] = /hw/ -----------------| SONORITY voiceless |-------------------------------- | voiced voiced voiced voiced | obstruents sonorants semi-vowels vowels v SYLLABLE EDGE -------------------------------------> CENTRE [W] = /W/ -----------------| |-------------------| SONORITY voiceless |----------| voiceless |------- | voiced voiced voiced voiced | obstruents sonorants semi-vowels vowels v SYLLABLE EDGE -------------------------------------------> CENTRE 4) Historical development ========================== Notions of markedness can be applied historically as well; they can render changes fathomable though they cannot, of course, predict them. With regard to the issue at hand: English lost sequences of /h/ and sonorant by early Middle English, /hr, hn, hl/ -> /r, n, l/ as the voiceless sonorants which were their phonetic realisations were more marked. Okay - I know - I am using `marked' in a different sense now. Here I mean phonetically unnatural (or unusual for a less controversial term). The reasoning is as follows: sonorants are characterised by virtually no obstruction of air flow in the supra-glottal area, /r/ has no contact (unless intermittently, if trilled), /l/ has free lateral flow of air, /n, m, N/ have nasal flow. With free passage of air, the vocal folds are more likely to vibrate (Bernoulli effect), i.e. produce voice, so that voicelessness with these segments is a `marked' phenomenon. Stop, you say - if voiceless sonorants are unusual then voiceless semi-vowels are even more so. True, the question is why has [W] survived so long in so many varieties of English? There is no simple answer to this, but I think one argument is acceptable, indeed strengthened by the interpretation of [W] as /hw/. Note that this is parallel to /hj-/ as in _hue_. And there are many sequences of /hj-/ in English, guaranteed by the occurrence of /h/ before /ju:/. The point here is that /hw/ could have been bolstered by the established position of /hj-/ sequences, much as the voice distinction between interdental fricatives owes its existence (cf. its tenuous functional load) not least to the centrality of the voice-voiceless distinction among obstruents in general in English. 5) A little support from outside ================================ In case the above has not convinced the staunchest supporters of a doggedly phonetic interpretation of [W] of the wrongness of their ways, allow me in conclusion to cite some non-English evidence. In Irish there are several clusters of /s/ followed by a sonorant: /sr-, sl-, sn-/. When preceded by a grammatical element which demands lenition (phonetically weakening of a word-initial segment) the /s/ is altered to /h/ and what one obtains phonologically are the sequences /hr-, hl-, hn/, e.g. _sro'n_ `nose', _a shro'n_ `his nose'. Now these sequences are PHONETICALLY voiceless segments but it would be ludicrous to postulate /R, L, N/ (voiceless sonorants) PHONOLOGICALLY for Irish. Returning to English: one could in fact take the phonetic interpretation case to comic lengths to demonstrate its absurdity. If one includes allegro phenomena in English, for instance, then one could assume that English still has voiceless sonorants, after all PHONETICALLY the sonorants in _come here_ [M], _clout_ [L], _snoose_ [N], _shrimp_ [R] are all at least partially voiceless. But maybe the matter at the end of the day boils down to one's Weltanschauung - some people do not like abstract analyses and just will not accept them no matter what amount of convincing evidence one presents. On the issues discussed here allow me, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet (just a little puff), to offer a germane reference: Hickey, Raymond. 1984. "Syllable onsets in Irish English", Word 35: 67-74. Btw: I would be a little wary of maintaining that naive speakers (or colleagues like Larry Trask before they got infected by linguistics) think of [W] as a _w_ sound with a _h_ before it: the validity of phonological segments is not affected by speakers consciousness awareness of them, or their lack of this. In the days of dark ignorance before I started linguistics I did not realise that [W] could be conceived of as /h/ + /w/ (although I have [W] for every _wh-_ in English) and it might be reading too much into one's own early biography to think so; however, this is not of immediate relevance to the matter at hand (though speaker intuitions are of course important). Ray Hickey ************************************************* University Essen | Tel. : +49 201 183 3580 FB 03 | Fax. : +49 201 183 xxxx -Anglistik- | E-MAIL: r.hickey at uni-essen.de D-45117 Essen | Germany ************************************************* From s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au Wed Sep 18 15:46:01 1996 From: s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au (Nick Nicholas) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 01:46:01 +1000 Subject: Call for articles: _Dhumbadji!_ Message-ID: _Dhumbadji!: Journal for the History of Language_ is published twice a year by the Association for the History of Language. The journal exists to promote interest in the history, origins and diversification of language. Now in its fifth year and under new editorship, _Dhumbadji!_ welcomes contributions for publication. Linguists interested in submitting articles for publication in the next issue of _Dhumbadji!_ (Vol. 3 No. 1) are asked to send their contributions by December 15, 1996 to: Association for the History of Language c/- Nick Nicholas Dept of Linguistics & Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3052 AUSTRALIA n.nicholas at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au A homepage for the Association for the History of Language and _Dhumbadji!_ is available on the World Wide Web, and is *provisionally* located at . (This address is expected to change within the next two months.) The page includes a full listing of contents for past _Dhumbadji!_ issues. As readers should be able to see, a major focus of _Dhumbadji!_ has been palaeolinguistics, but we also welcome contributions from researchers working in traditional reconstructive historical linguistics, language change and grammaticalisation, language contact and lexical transfer, and any other field of research meeting the journal's stated aims. We look forward to hearing from you! -- ki egeire arga ta sthqia ta qlimmena; Nick Nicholas. Ling., Univ. Melbourne. san ahdoni pou se nuxtia anoijiata s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au thn wra pou kelahda epnixth, wimena! stis murwdies kai st' anqismena bata. ADDRESS CHANGED FROM: -- N. Kazantzakis, _Tertsines: Xristos_. nsn at speech.language.unimelb.edu.au From martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de Thu Sep 19 11:54:59 1996 From: martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de (Fco. Javier Mart nez Garc a) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 13:54:59 +0200 Subject: Leiden: Indo-European Course Register Message-ID: Indo-European Course Register You can find now the Course Register for Leiden (Holland) See following URL: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/idg-ws96.html#Leiden From alderson at netcom.com Thu Sep 19 18:28:18 1996 From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:28:18 -0700 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again In-Reply-To: (message from Larry Trask on Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:00:10 +0100) Message-ID: Larry writes: >I have occasionally seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a >contrast between a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this >idea is still taken seriously?) Why should it not be taken seriously? There are different developments in the descendant dialects, after all. To take one example, were there no contrast between *k{^w} and *kw (if you will allow TeX-style notation for superscripts), we would expect the word for _horse_ to appear as Skt. **aca, Attic/Ionic **epos/**ipos, rather than the attested Skt. as^va, Attic (h)ippos, Ionic (h)ikkos. Other unexceptionable examples exist. Rich Alderson From alotz at aimnet.com Fri Sep 20 13:33:18 1996 From: alotz at aimnet.com (Deborah W. Anderson) Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:33:18 +0000 Subject: IE Newsletter Message-ID: A new edition of the Indo-European Newsletter has just appeared. It contains news, a list of new and forthcoming books and journals, brief book reviews, newly-available IE electronic resources, a list of upcoming conferences as well as essays. Among the "Brief Communications": --a summary by James P. Mallory on the "Conference on the Bronze Age and Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia" held at the University of Pennsylvania on April 19-21, 1996, a conference devoted to the mummies found in Xinjiang, China and their archaeological, genetic, and possible linguistic affiliation(s). --a short summary of the Second German Linguistics Annual Conference held at Madison, WI on April 26-28 by Christopher Stevens. The essays in this issue include: --two essays on recent developments in Insular Celtic, one on Celtic phonology and morphology (by Kim McCone) and the other on syntax and other matters (by Joseph Eska). --a contribution by Craig Melchert on recent developments in Anatolian. The newsletter is officially affiliated with the Indo-European Studies program at UCLA. Contribution levels (which pay for this bi-annual newsletter and support IE activities) are $10 for students, $20 for others ($25 for those outside the continental U.S.). Checks should be made payable to "FAIES/UCLA Foundation" and sent to: FAIES, 2143 Kelton Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90025. VISA and Mastercard are also accepted. For further information, please contact: Deborah Anderson at dwanders @violet.berkeley.edu (or: alotz at aimnet.com) Deborah Anderson Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Linguistics UC Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 From martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de Fri Sep 27 10:14:19 1996 From: martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de (Fco. Javier Mart nez Garc a) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 12:14:19 +0200 Subject: All: In Memoriam Hartmut Katz (Munchen) Message-ID: Friday 27 September 1996 With the greatest sadness we have just learned that Hartmut Katz (Munich) died last night. Freitag, den 27. Sept. 1996 Wir haben soeben erfahren, dass Hartmut Katz (Munchen) in der Nacht zum 27.9. verstorben ist From LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU Sat Sep 7 12:14:48 1996 From: LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU (L-Soft list server at U. of South Carolina (1.8b)) Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 08:14:48 EDT Subject: HISTLING: approval required (0DAB85) Message-ID: ------------------------ Original message (44 lines) -------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from UNIVSCVM (NJE origin SMTP at UNIVSCVM) by VM.SC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8 a) with BSMTP id 6687; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 09:47:25 -0400 Received: from curlew.cs.man.ac.uk by VM.SC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Fri, 06 Sep 96 09:47:20 EDT Received: from fs1.art.man.ac.uk by curlew.cs.man.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Fri, 6 Sep 1996 14:37:57 +0100 Received: from MAN-ART-FS1/SpoolDir by fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Mercury 1.21); 6 Sep 96 14:37:33 GMT0BST Received: from SpoolDir by MAN-ART-FS1 (Mercury 1.21); 6 Sep 96 14:37:14 GMT0BST From: David Denison Organization: Faculty of Arts To: linguist at tamvm1.tamu.edu, HISTLING at UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 14:37:11 GMT0BST Subject: 10th ICEHL, August 1998 Reply-to: d.denison at man.ac.uk Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22 Message-ID: <5EA26A171DF at fs1.art.man.ac.uk> *** preliminary announcement *** The 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics will be held in Manchester in August 1998. Our preferred dates - still provisional - are: Friday 21 August to either Tuesday 25 or Wednesday 26 August 1998. If you know of any significant potential problems or clashes, please e-mail me immediately at the conference e-mail address: 10icehl at man.ac.uk I expect to confirm the date shortly. Our still rudimentary WWW page will be regularly updated over the next few months: http://www.art.man.ac.uk/english/10icehl.htm David Denison, organiser _____________________________________ David Denison e-mail: d.denison at man.ac.uk Dept of English and American Studies tel. +44 161-275 3154 University of Manchester fax. +44 161-275 3256 Manchester M13 9PL, UK. From LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU Wed Sep 11 12:03:13 1996 From: LISTSERV at VM.SC.EDU (L-Soft list server at U. of South Carolina (1.8b)) Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 08:03:13 EDT Subject: HISTLING: approval required (2C3DEF) Message-ID: ------------------------ Original message (31 lines) -------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from UNIVSCVM (NJE origin SMTP at UNIVSCVM) by VM.SC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8 a) with BSMTP id 8072; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 06:10:47 -0400 Received: from rsuna.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk by VM.SC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Mon, 09 Sep 96 06:10:43 EDT Received: by rsuna.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk (Smail3.1.29.1 #3) id m0v03HG-00005IC; Mon, 9 Sep 96 11:09 BST Message-Id: Subject: Portuguese _cotovelo_ `elbow' To: histling at univscvm.csd.scarolina.edu (histling list) Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 11:09:14 +0100 (BST) From: "Larry Trask" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 386 Meyer-Luebke's REW explains Portuguese _cotovelo_ `elbow' as a loan from Arabic _qobtal_ `elbow', itself a loan from Latin _cubitalis_ `an ell long', a derivative of Latin _cubitum_ `elbow'. Can anyone tell me if this roundabout etymology, with its Arabic mediation, is generally accepted today? Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Thu Sep 12 12:58:45 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 13:58:45 +0100 Subject: HL textbook Message-ID: Several subscribers have asked to be notified when my textbook was published. Since I can no longer remember who they all were, I'm taking the liberty of using this list. The book is now out in Britain. It's this: R. L. Trask. 1996. Historical Linguistics. London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-340-60758-0 (pb), 0-340-66295-6 (hb). 430 pp. The paperback sells for 16.99 pounds in Britain (I think). That's about US $25, though the American price may actually be lower, given the peculiar way that publishers do things. No doubt it'll take a few weeks for copies to be shipped across the pond. The book is distributed in the USA by St, Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, NY 10010. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From jeff.marck at anu.edu.au Fri Sep 13 13:37:19 1996 From: jeff.marck at anu.edu.au (Jeff Marck) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 14:37:19 +0100 Subject: Phylogeny and "Sharing" versus "Borrowing" Message-ID: Histling and Arcling Subscribers: The demise of a common language between Tonga and Samoa seems to have occurred slowly during a period from about 1000 B.C. when those islands were first settled, through the first millenium B.C. when they were apparently sharing the innovations that came to mark Proto Polynesian, and then sharing seems to have declined significantly by about the time of the divergence of Eastern Polynesian with numerous innovations marking it as more like ancient Samoan than ancient Tongan. Had Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean, not emerged out of the Western Polynesian heartland, the measure of whether ancient Tongan and Samoan were "sharing innovations" or "borrowing", it seems to me, would have been the point at which the phonologies were different enough that certain sounds were no longer being shared according to patterns of regular inheritance from the proto language. However, with the divergence of Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean, it seems to me that there is a phylogenetic principle that says the sharings of ancient Tongan and Samoan prior to those other divergences were "shared innovations" (if unmarked by irregular sound correspondences) while any sharings after those divergences are formally "borrowings". I don't immediately find relevant discussions in Hoch, etc. and some of my favourite historical linguistics web sites seem to be down at the moment. I would appreciate any suggestions on relevant areal (any language family) and theoretical titles. I find that the archaeologists are quite grateful for clarification when I point out that what we call "sharing" in one instance and "borrowing" in the next is a linguistic formalism having to do with how the phylogeny is constructed and implies no discontinuity in the social processes current between Tonga and Samoa at the time of the divergence of Eastern Polynesian, the Outliers and Niuean. Jeff Marck Linguistics-RSPAS-ANU ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Marck Publications Officer HTC-NCEPH-ANU Health Transition Centre Canberra ACT 0200 Australia National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Australian National University jeff.marck at anu.edu.au Voice:61-6-249-5618 (5614(fax)) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Health Transition Review: Dedicated to understanding the cultural, social and behavioural determinants of health. http://www-nceph.anu.edu.au/htc/htr.htm (back and current issues on-line) ------------------------------------------------------------------- From lonhyn at nas.nasa.gov Fri Sep 13 01:37:33 1996 From: lonhyn at nas.nasa.gov (Lonhyn T. Jasinskyj) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 18:37:33 -0700 Subject: Historical phonetics: "wh" --> {"w", "hw"} Message-ID: Could anyone point me to some material on the origin of the English "wh" (as in "wheat", "which", etc.) and how the two alternate pronunciations ("w" and "hw" came about)? This subject occupied all of dinner last night and a good bit of poking around today. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks, Lonhyn From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Sep 13 15:17:10 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:17:10 +0100 Subject: English /hw-/ > /w-/ Message-ID: Lonhyn Jasinsky asks about the reduction of English /hw-/ to /w-/. Since I can't find his e-mail address in the posting, I'm replying to the list. Proto-Indo-European */k/ developed regularly to /h/ (or /x/, if you prefer) in the Germanic languages, by the First Germanic Consonant Shift (Grimm's Law). The resulting fricative was generally pronounced [h] in syllable-initial position but [x] in syllable-final position, much as in modern German. The PIE initial cluster */kw-/ accordingly developed in Old English into /hw-/: hence, for example, Old English `what' and `wheat'. The spelling was changed after the Norman conquest, apparently under Norman influence, to the modern , and hence orthographic and . The pronunciation remained /hw-/ in England for centuries, at least for most speakers. In the south of England, though, the phonetically natural reduction to /w-/ is attested from the early Middle English period, but this reduction remained a vulgarism for centuries afterward; it did not spread widely, and it did not reach educated speech. Accordingly, the nearly universal pronunciation /hw-/ was carried to North America in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, the innovating pronunciation /w-/ began spreading rapidly in England, even into educated speech; by 1800, /w-/ was firmly established as the norm in England. Today, /w-/ is universal in England and Wales (except in Northumberland), even in the most careful and prestigious speech, though a few teachers of elocution and drama still try to to inculcate the /hw-/ pronunciation, which is still often perceived as elegant. In Scotland, though, /hw-/ remains universal. The Linguistic Atlas of the Eastern USA, compiled over a generation ago, shows /hw-/ as normal in most places, with /w-/ the norm in just three areas, all of them on the east coast: a large area centered on metropolitan New York, and two smaller ones centered on Boston and Charleston/Savannah. This distribution strongly suggests that /w-/ was introduced from England into these port cities and began spreading out from there. In the last generation, the innovating /w-/ has been spreading across the USA with astounding speed. The American linguist William Bright recently told me (p.c.) that /hw-/ was now confined to "a handful of old fogies". I myself (I'm from western New York State) have /hw-/, like my parents, but my two brothers and my sister (all younger) have only /w-/. My mother is acutely conscious of this; she notices the /w-/ of the young people and regards it as objectionable. There's a brief survey with references in vol. 1, section 3.2.4, of John Wells (1982), Accents of English, CUP. Useful intros to /h/-dropping generally in English are these two: James Milroy (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change. Blackwell. [section 5.5] James Milroy (1983). `On the sociolinguistic history of /h/-dropping in English'. In M. Davenport et al (eds), Current Topics in English Historical Linguistics, pp. 37-53. Odense University Press. But these two deal with h-dropping in general, and not explicitly with /hw-/. I might note that the Old English initial clusters /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, as in `loud', `ring', and `nut', lost their /h/ completely at a fairly early stage, and hence the reduction of /hw-/ to /w-/ can be seen as a continuation of a venerable process of reduction of such clusters. We are left only with /hj-/, as in , but even here there is abundant evidence of the sporadic or regional loss of /h/ in a number of varieties on both sides of the Atlantic. (In my own accent, /hju:/ has become something like /hIw/, and similarly for other such words, and hence no longer rhymes with or .) Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From swatts at tcd.ie Fri Sep 13 16:19:46 1996 From: swatts at tcd.ie (Sheila Watts) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 17:19:46 +0100 Subject: HW Message-ID: Larry Trask managed to mention large swathes of the English-speaking world, but not Ireland, where, as in Scotland, /hw-/ is universal. Sheila Watts ======================================================= Dr. Sheila Watts Department of Germanic Studies Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland Phone: 353-1-6081894 Fax: 353-1-677 2694 From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Sep 13 16:40:27 1996 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (ALICE FABER) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 12:40:27 -0400 Subject: /hw/, /hj/ Message-ID: Yet another addendum to Larry Trask's summary of the distribution of a /hw/-/w/ contrast in the English-speaking world. This summary included, in passing a mention of /hj/ (as in _huge_, _Hugh_). In New York City (which Larry mentioned as one of the focal areas in the US for the neutralization of /hw/-/w/), /hj/-/j/ is likewise neutralized, so that _Hugh_ and _you_ are (identically) [ju]. Alice Faber faber at haskins.yale.edu From tvn at cis.uni-muenchen.de Fri Sep 13 21:30:28 1996 From: tvn at cis.uni-muenchen.de (Theo Vennemann) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 22:30:28 +0100 Subject: hw- > w- in English Message-ID: Dear Fellow Linguists: A succinct treatment of the development hw- > w- in English, with many refernces, is A. Lutz, Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonanten- veraenderungen in der Geschichte des Englischen, Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer, 1991, pp. 45-56, with hj- > j- pp. 57-59, h- > zero before vowels pp. 59-67. This is in a chapter on the loss of English h in all positions, pp. 19-73. Mit freundlichen Gruessen, Theo Vennemann. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Sat Sep 14 15:00:10 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:00:10 +0100 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is still taken seriously?) But I don't think we can really tell whether OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. Likewise, he is probably right to suggest that OE /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/ were most likely voiceless resonants at the phonetic level, but again I don't think we can be certain that that's what they were phonologically. I would make three points. First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these three, if not for /hw-/. Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as clusters. Third, I myself "feel" my /hw-/ to be a cluster of /h/ + /w/, and have felt the same since childhood, when I first noticed that English had phonemes -- even if the phoneticians tell me that I'm actually producing a single segment, a voiceless glide. The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster interpretation, but is hardly decisive. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mcv at pi.net Sun Sep 15 09:27:21 1996 From: mcv at pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 02:27:21 PDT Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: >Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists >consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, >a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally >seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between >a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is >still taken seriously?) I haven't seen Mark Hale's message, so I don't know if he distinguishes between /kw/ and /k^w/ (palatalized velar). If /k^w/ counts, there is certainly reason to assume it had a separate, albeit marginal existence in PIE. It has distinct, and sometimes rather bizarre reflexes in at least Indo-Iranian, Greek, Balto-Slavic and possibly Armenian and Anatolian: Skt. s'v (s'va^ "dog") Av. sp (spa^ "dog") Arm. s^ (s^un "dog") Grk. pp, tt, kk (hippos/ikkos "horse", kittanos/titanos "chalk") Lit. s^v (s^viec^iu` "to shine") Slv. sv (svet "light, beside kve^t-/cve^t- "flower") Gamkrelidze and Ivanov posit a sound law in Anatolian to the effect that *k^w > s(w) (Hitt. s^uwa- "to fill", Luw. suwanai "dogs"). The case for /kw/ is weaker, but Latin ca^seus "cheese" [Pok.: "(von *ca^so- aus *kwa^t-so- [cf.] abg. kvasU; das Fehlen des -w- harrt noch der Erklaerung)" and vapor (*kwapo^s, cf. also Grk. kapnos) are at least remarkable. Balto-Slavic /kv/ instead of /k/ (or /s^v/) seems due to the usual B-S confusion over *k^ vs. *k . >But I don't think we can really tell whether >OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. It was certainly not deemed worthy of a separate symbol, as were (wynn), (thorn) and (ash). Or in Gothic, for that matter. That leaves the question of why the Norman clerks decided to change the spelling to (cf. , , ). I assume it was to reflect the pronunciation [W] (unvoiced labio-velar appr.), whether it was still /hw/ for the English or not. ------------------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at pi.net ------------------------------------- From hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca Sun Sep 15 22:05:30 1996 From: hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca (Mark Hale) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 18:05:30 -0400 Subject: English /hw-/ > /w-/ Message-ID: I apparently inadvertently sent this only to Prof. Trask: >Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:59:20 -0400 >To: Larry Trask >From: Mark Hale >Subject: Re: English /hw-/ > /w-/ > > >Just two further notes on Trask's /hw-/ > /w-/ observations. First, its >Indo-European source does not contain a "cluster" *kw- but rather a >unitary labiovelar segment. There is no reason to believe its OE >descendent is anything but a single segment. Second, OE /hw/ (and /hl/, /hr/, /hn/, etc.) >were almost certainly initial voiceless resonants (rather than sequences). >The change involved is that from voiceless resonant > voiced resonant (not >"cluster simplification" and not "h-loss"). > >Mark > From hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca Sun Sep 15 22:17:14 1996 From: hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca (Mark Hale) Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 18:17:14 -0400 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: At 04:00 PM 9/14/96 +0100, Prof. Trask wrote: >Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists >consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment, >a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally >seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between >a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this idea is >still taken seriously?) But I don't think we can really tell whether >OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster. As far as I know the existence of a contrast between [kW] (a labiovelar) and sequences of the type /k/ + /w/ (similarly for the voiced and voiced aspirated series) is universally accepted by IEists. The ancestor of the /hw/ of 'what' is a labiovelar. >Likewise, he is probably right to suggest that OE /hl-/, /hr-/, and >/hn-/ were most likely voiceless resonants at the phonetic level, but >again I don't think we can be certain that that's what they were >phonologically. > >I would make three points. > >First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to >derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has >certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these >three, if not for /hw-/. Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic phonological status of segments. >Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely >alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting >that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as >clusters. As the vowels show, alliteration is feature-driven, rather than segment-driven. The alliteration facts point to some phonetic similarity between the segments, but not to identity. >Third, I myself "feel" my /hw-/ to be a cluster of /h/ + /w/, and >have felt the same since childhood, when I first noticed that English >had phonemes -- even if the phoneticians tell me that I'm actually >producing a single segment, a voiceless glide. Prof. Trask's "feelings" are, unfortunately, also non-probative, no matter when he started feeling them. They are non-probative for the Modern English dialect he speaks, and completely irrelevant to the question of the status of /hw/ in Old English. Even if Prof. Trask were *considerably* older than he appears. >The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >interpretation, but is hardly decisive. *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. I agree with Prof. Trask that the matter is not completely determinable by the evidence. But we should distinguish between arguments which might in principle support a particular analysis and those which are in fact not relevant. Mark From mcv at pi.net Mon Sep 16 18:08:53 1996 From: mcv at pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:08:53 PDT Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again Message-ID: Mark Hale wrote: >At 04:00 PM 9/14/96 +0100, Prof. Trask wrote: >>First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to >>derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/. Hence there has >>certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these >>three, if not for /hw-/. > >Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic >phonological status of segments. Synchronic when? We can be pretty confident that there was a cluster, synchronically, in PIE *klu^tos. There is none, synchronically, in English "loud". There is of course, by definition, no such thing as synchronical "cluster reduction", or diachronical "phonological status". >>The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >>interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > >*hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely irrelevant' would >be closer to the mark, in my view. Since all we can know about OE necessarily comes to us through OE spelling, I would hesitate to call OE spelling "completely irrelevant". ------------------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at pi.net ------------------------------------- From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Sep 16 09:49:28 1996 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 10:49:28 +0100 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ once more Message-ID: Well, I failed to notice that Mark Hale's posting, to which I replied on this list, had been sent only to me. My response must have bewildered quite a few people; apologies. Apparently it's now impossible to post to the list by using a `reply' option. > As far as I know the existence of a contrast between [kW] (a > labiovelar) and sequences of the type /k/ + /w/ (similarly for the > voiced and voiced aspirated series) is universally accepted by > IEists. The ancestor of the /hw/ of 'what' is a labiovelar. Thanks. The recent discussions of PIE phonology I've seen have concentrated on other and more exciting issues, and I haven't seen a view expressed on this point for years. [On my point that OE /hl-/ derives from PIE */kl-/, and so on] > Etymological source is not probative for determining the synchronic > phonological status of segments. Agreed, of course, but then I wasn't suggesting that that the PIE origin proved anything about Old English -- only that it shows that cluster reduction must have occurred at some time. >> Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely >> alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting >> that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as >> clusters. > As the vowels show, alliteration is feature-driven, rather than > segment-driven. The alliteration facts point to some phonetic > similarity between the segments, but not to identity. Well, I'm perfectly prepared to accept a featural element in alliteration, if the evidence points that way. But surely it is going too far simply to declare that "alliteration is feature-driven", and that's all there is to it. As far as I can see, a segmental interpretation of OE alliteration is a lot simpler and more successful than a feature-based one. I don't think the alliteration of vowels is a strong argument for a feature-based view: it's just that zero onsets alliterated, and unsurprisingly so. How does it clarify matters to bring the vowels into it? Anyway, what would have been the featural basis of the alliteration of the five onsets in question? We have alliteration among /h-/ (a voiceless vowel, probably, though conceivably a fricative), /hw-/ (perhaps a voiceless glide, probably a fricative), /hl-/ (a voiceless lateral), /hr-/ (a voiceless rhotic), and /hn-/ (a voiceless nasal). The only feature these obviously have in common is [- voice] -- but other voiceless segments don't alliterate with any of these, or with one another. If you are happy to deny fricative status to the first two, then you could point to [- voice, - obstruent] as the class in question. But this looks fishy to me. First, I'm aware of no evidence that these five items behaved as a natural class in any other respect in Old English. Second, none of the parallel groups [- voi, + obstr], [+ voi, + obstr], or [+ voi, - obstr] alliterate in Old English. I therefore don't find it easy to agree, with Mark, that "The alliteration facts point to some phonetic similarity between the segments, but not to identity." Are there other cases in OE of alliteration between onsets which share some phonetic similarity but not identity? [on my intuition that my onset is phonologically /hw-/] > Prof. Trask's "feelings" are, unfortunately, also non-probative, no > matter when he started feeling them. They are non-probative for the > Modern English dialect he speaks, and completely irrelevant to the > question of the status of /hw/ in Old English. Even if Prof. Trask > were *considerably* older than he appears. I don't know how old I appear, but I think some of my younger students have the vague impression I've been around since the Bronze Age :-) Hell, even one of my British colleagues once asked me in all seriousness what it was like watching Joe DiMaggio play. Honestly. But I digress. Of course I agree that my intuitions don't prove a phonological analysis -- but I don't think they're irrelevant, either. My point is that it's perfectly possible for speakers to perceive their speech in phonological terms which are at odds with the phonetics -- the same point made so famously by Sapir over 70 years ago. Hence, even if we had ironclad evidence that the onsets in question were phonetically single segments in OE (and we don't, of course), such evidence would not prove that they were not clusters phonologically. >> The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster >> interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely > irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. Well, no. I'm afraid I can't agree that the orthography established by native speakers is "completely irrelevant" to the phonological facts of a language. If that were true, orthographies would be totally arbitrary, and they're clearly not. Of course the orthography doesn't prove anything, but, as Miguel Carrasquer Vidal has pointed out, it's interesting that OE-speakers never showed any tendency to represent these onsets with single letters. > I agree with Prof. Trask that the matter is not completely > determinable by the evidence. But we should distinguish between > arguments which might in principle support a particular analysis and > those which are in fact not relevant. Yes, I am in full agreement with Mark here. But I can't see that I've raised any irrelevant arguments. Once again, my points are these: Etymology: three of the four onsets originated as clusters. Alliteration: the alliteration facts are clearly more compatible with a cluster analysis of all four onsets than with a single-segment analysis. Intuition: at least some modern speakers perceive /hw-/ as a cluster, in defiance of the phonetics, and therefore purely phonetic facts about OE, even if we had any, would not in principle count against the cluster analysis. Orthography: this is not inconsistent with either analysis, but is more directly supportive of the cluster analysis. I'll remind everybody that I was only trying to give a simple answer to a question about the /hw-/ ~ /w-/ variation in mondern English, and not proposing a serious analysis of Old English phonology. But, if I were to undertake this last task, I think I would probably conclude that, while the evidence available is not decisive, a cluster analysis looks more attractive than a single-segment analysis. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From MFCEPRH at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Mon Sep 16 09:12:23 1996 From: MFCEPRH at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard M Hogg) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 09:12:23 GMT0BST Subject: English /hw/ > /w-/ Message-ID: The cluster vs single segment argument about is less open and shut than Mark Hale suggests. Fundamentally, he cannot dismiss the evidence of alliteration so easily. That all vowels apparently alliterate with one another is explicable as alliteration of zero onsets (ie, vowels don't alliterate, initial consonants do, even when they're zero). And the ability of, say,< hw> and
to alliterate with one another is in sharp contrast to the behaviour of . Whether we analyse, say, , as /xw/ or voiceless /w/ may not be decidable, and it seems best to acknowledge that both possibilities have considerable merit (sorry to be so spineless). On Miguel Vidal's question about the spelling shift, I seem to recall that Mosse explained the shift from to (etc.) as a readjustment to conform with the standard Anglo-Norman digraphic sequences of consonant + , as in , . That seems very probable, especially if at the time the special sounds represented by were being lost. But if this is so, the spelling change has no phonological or phonetic significance. Finally I don't think that Mark Hale should be quite so dismissive of spelling evidence as he is when he says OE spelling evidence is "completely irrelevant". A large part of our task is to reconcile plausibly reasonable phonological analyses with actual spellings and we should never give up on that. From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Mon Sep 16 16:28:06 1996 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:28:06 EDT Subject: posting to HISTLING Message-ID: Dear fellow HISTLINGers, Today Larry Trask commented about not being able to post to the entire list by using the function. That's the way HISTLING has operated since I started the list a year ago. Actually, for the first few days it operated with the default of , which meant that every time one used the function, it went to the entire list. By popular demand (and I really do mean _demand_, I had the list changed so that function only goes to the sender, not the entire list. That way, everyone's mailbox is not filled with personal comments and the like. Now that the list is moderated, whenever you post to HISTLING, you will receive an automatic notification from our listserver that the posting has been sent to the listowner (that's me) for approval. I then resend the posting to the entire list as soon as I see it. I do, however, reserve the right not to re-post messages that have nothing to do with language history in the loosest sense of the word, messages that are summaries of discussions on other lists, or messages that do not follow the usual rules of professional discourse. Dorothy Disterheft From rhpwri at liverpool.ac.uk Tue Sep 17 09:39:30 1996 From: rhpwri at liverpool.ac.uk (Dr R.H.P. Wright) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 10:39:30 +0100 Subject: relevance of orthography Message-ID: In the last mail Larry Trask said: > > >> The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster > >> interpretation, but is hardly decisive. > > > *hardly decisive* is rather an understatement: 'completely > > irrelevant' would be closer to the mark, in my view. > > Well, no. I'm afraid I can't agree that the orthography established > by native speakers is "completely irrelevant" to the phonological > facts of a language. If that were true, orthographies would be > totally arbitrary, and they're clearly not. Doesn't it depend how old the establishment of the standard orthography is? We can presume that to some extent there is a rationale behind the establishment of a new orthography (and often that rationale is of a phonographic nature, but not necessarily), so we can make some rough deductions from spellings found at such a time of reform; but once the orthography has become standardized in itself, later generations tend to perceive their task in writing as achieving the standardized spellings of words (in a logographic manner) rather than achieving a written form close to a phonetic transcription. Nobody, unfortunately, writes with the aim of helping philologists of a thousand years later. - RW From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca Tue Sep 17 19:13:12 1996 From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 16:43:12 -0230 Subject: English /hw/ > /w-/ In-Reply-To: <6D4C3C670C5@fs1.art.man.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Richard M Hogg wrote: > The cluster vs single segment argument about is less > open and shut than Mark Hale suggests. Fundamentally, he cannot > dismiss the evidence of alliteration so easily. That all vowels > apparently alliterate with one another is explicable as alliteration > of zero onsets (ie, vowels don't alliterate, initial consonants do, > even when they're zero). And the ability of, say,< hw> and
to > alliterate with one another is in sharp contrast to the behaviour of > . The orthography of Ancient Greek supports Richard Hogg's analysis. Initial [h], described as "rough breathing", was marked as a diacritic _c_, not with a letter of the alphabet. Zero onset before a vowel, described by the ancient grammarians as "smooth breathing", was likewise marked with a diacritic, not with a letter of the alphabet. The orthography indicates that the Greeks considered initial aspiration vs. zero as onset phenomena, not as regular phonemes. Since [h] only occurred initially (although it prompted sandhi phenomena) this is an appropriate way to treat it. (J.R.Firth is probably sitting up in his grave saying "I told you so"!) Initial [h] therefore constitutes a variety of problems. I suspect that with the loss of post vocalic [h] in EMnE we are looking at onset phenomena in MnE, with [hj] and [hw] showing the possibilities of onset before semi-vowels as well as before full vowels. John Hewson Memorial University of Newfoundland From lan300 at aixrs1.hrz.uni-essen.de Wed Sep 18 18:28:15 1996 From: lan300 at aixrs1.hrz.uni-essen.de (Prof. Dr. R. Hickey) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 14:28:15 EDT Subject: posting to HISTLING[D[D[D In-Reply-To: from "Dorothy Disterheft" at Sep 16, 96 12:28:06 pm Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Email title: /hw/ - /w/ and syllable structure Date: 17 September 1996 Time: 00:36:21 To: HistLing subscribers via owner-histling at VM.SC.EDU From: Hickey, Raymond r.hickey at uni-essen.de Cluster analysis of single phonetic segments ============================================ Have I overlooked somebody's comments in the current discussion about - or can it really be that no-one has considered structural arguments here? To remind ourselves: we are dealing here with phonetic reality and phonological postulations. Phonetic segments are there, i.e. for Irish, Scottish and most American speakers of English in a word like _which_ there IS a lack of voice during the approximant which contrasts with the voice which IS present in a word like _witch_. The next question in whether, in the abstract analysis of the place this sound has in the system of English phonology, we assume two segments /h/ + /w/ or just one /W/. On this level there is (as yet) no question of proving existence. The ontological status of phonological postulates is another issue which the linguist cannot address, given the inability to link any of the analyses we make with any level of mental activity. Other considerations determine the type of analysis we offer: symmetry and balance in the system we construe, simplicity (parsimoniousness of design, keeping to Occam's razor, etc.), maximum explanatory power of single constructs (free-rides and the like). Sorry, all this is rather platitudinous to those in the field, but it should nonetheless be borne in mind. Now there is strong system-based evidence for the analysis of [W] (voiceless labiovelar approximant), in those varieties of English which still have it, as consisting of two segments (segment = a phonological unit which does, if biuniqueness applies, correspond to a phonetically identifiable sound, but does not have to). You might think to begin with that /w - W/ form a voiced - voiceless pair in English like /s - z, t - d, p - b/, etc. However in my opinion, the arguments for [W] as /h/ + /w/ are more compelling; here they are. 1) /hw/ and /h/ in general =========================== The first segment in /hw/ which one can posit phonologically correlates with /h/ word initially, that is to postulate /h/ + /w/ has additional justification in the fact that /h/ occurs initially anyway (in varieties with [W]). Conversely, to my knowledge no variety of English which has /h/-dropping also has [W]. i.e. lack of /h-/ precludes the cluster /hw-/. 2) Position in syllable ======================== It is a standard wisdom on syllable structure that there is in general an increase of sonority from edge to centre. Analysing [W] as /hw/ means that one has an obstruent /h/, then a semi-vowel (a continuant with very open articulation) /w/ and a following vowel which is in keeping with this cline. Note that this same argument can be used to support an analysis of [Cu:] (C = voiceless palatal fricative) in English _hue_ as /hju:/ : obstruent, semi-vowel, vowel with increasing sonority from beginning of onset to nucleus. I take it that I don't have to offer too much justification for regarding /j/ and /w/ as semi-vowels, they are high front and high back glides respectively and have been regularly posited as diphthong end-points in American phonology since the early structuralists and are seen PHONETICALLY as glides in hiatus, e.g. _seeing_ [si:jiN] and _doing_ [du:wiN]. 3) Markedness considerations ============================= Cross-linguistic observations hav lead in phonology to many valid statements treated under the heading `markedness' (understood statistically here). Thus voice is unmarked for vowels, semi-vowels and sonorants just as voicelessness is for obstruents, i.e. there are (far) more languages with voiced sonorants that with voiceless ones as well and there are (slightly) more languages with voiceless fricatives than with voiced ones as well. Now English of course does not have voiceless sonorants (systemically) so that to posit [W] would mean that there would be an unevenness in the distribution of voice, compare the following charts. [W] = /hw/ -----------------| SONORITY voiceless |-------------------------------- | voiced voiced voiced voiced | obstruents sonorants semi-vowels vowels v SYLLABLE EDGE -------------------------------------> CENTRE [W] = /W/ -----------------| |-------------------| SONORITY voiceless |----------| voiceless |------- | voiced voiced voiced voiced | obstruents sonorants semi-vowels vowels v SYLLABLE EDGE -------------------------------------------> CENTRE 4) Historical development ========================== Notions of markedness can be applied historically as well; they can render changes fathomable though they cannot, of course, predict them. With regard to the issue at hand: English lost sequences of /h/ and sonorant by early Middle English, /hr, hn, hl/ -> /r, n, l/ as the voiceless sonorants which were their phonetic realisations were more marked. Okay - I know - I am using `marked' in a different sense now. Here I mean phonetically unnatural (or unusual for a less controversial term). The reasoning is as follows: sonorants are characterised by virtually no obstruction of air flow in the supra-glottal area, /r/ has no contact (unless intermittently, if trilled), /l/ has free lateral flow of air, /n, m, N/ have nasal flow. With free passage of air, the vocal folds are more likely to vibrate (Bernoulli effect), i.e. produce voice, so that voicelessness with these segments is a `marked' phenomenon. Stop, you say - if voiceless sonorants are unusual then voiceless semi-vowels are even more so. True, the question is why has [W] survived so long in so many varieties of English? There is no simple answer to this, but I think one argument is acceptable, indeed strengthened by the interpretation of [W] as /hw/. Note that this is parallel to /hj-/ as in _hue_. And there are many sequences of /hj-/ in English, guaranteed by the occurrence of /h/ before /ju:/. The point here is that /hw/ could have been bolstered by the established position of /hj-/ sequences, much as the voice distinction between interdental fricatives owes its existence (cf. its tenuous functional load) not least to the centrality of the voice-voiceless distinction among obstruents in general in English. 5) A little support from outside ================================ In case the above has not convinced the staunchest supporters of a doggedly phonetic interpretation of [W] of the wrongness of their ways, allow me in conclusion to cite some non-English evidence. In Irish there are several clusters of /s/ followed by a sonorant: /sr-, sl-, sn-/. When preceded by a grammatical element which demands lenition (phonetically weakening of a word-initial segment) the /s/ is altered to /h/ and what one obtains phonologically are the sequences /hr-, hl-, hn/, e.g. _sro'n_ `nose', _a shro'n_ `his nose'. Now these sequences are PHONETICALLY voiceless segments but it would be ludicrous to postulate /R, L, N/ (voiceless sonorants) PHONOLOGICALLY for Irish. Returning to English: one could in fact take the phonetic interpretation case to comic lengths to demonstrate its absurdity. If one includes allegro phenomena in English, for instance, then one could assume that English still has voiceless sonorants, after all PHONETICALLY the sonorants in _come here_ [M], _clout_ [L], _snoose_ [N], _shrimp_ [R] are all at least partially voiceless. But maybe the matter at the end of the day boils down to one's Weltanschauung - some people do not like abstract analyses and just will not accept them no matter what amount of convincing evidence one presents. On the issues discussed here allow me, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet (just a little puff), to offer a germane reference: Hickey, Raymond. 1984. "Syllable onsets in Irish English", Word 35: 67-74. Btw: I would be a little wary of maintaining that naive speakers (or colleagues like Larry Trask before they got infected by linguistics) think of [W] as a _w_ sound with a _h_ before it: the validity of phonological segments is not affected by speakers consciousness awareness of them, or their lack of this. In the days of dark ignorance before I started linguistics I did not realise that [W] could be conceived of as /h/ + /w/ (although I have [W] for every _wh-_ in English) and it might be reading too much into one's own early biography to think so; however, this is not of immediate relevance to the matter at hand (though speaker intuitions are of course important). Ray Hickey ************************************************* University Essen | Tel. : +49 201 183 3580 FB 03 | Fax. : +49 201 183 xxxx -Anglistik- | E-MAIL: r.hickey at uni-essen.de D-45117 Essen | Germany ************************************************* From s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au Wed Sep 18 15:46:01 1996 From: s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au (Nick Nicholas) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 01:46:01 +1000 Subject: Call for articles: _Dhumbadji!_ Message-ID: _Dhumbadji!: Journal for the History of Language_ is published twice a year by the Association for the History of Language. The journal exists to promote interest in the history, origins and diversification of language. Now in its fifth year and under new editorship, _Dhumbadji!_ welcomes contributions for publication. Linguists interested in submitting articles for publication in the next issue of _Dhumbadji!_ (Vol. 3 No. 1) are asked to send their contributions by December 15, 1996 to: Association for the History of Language c/- Nick Nicholas Dept of Linguistics & Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3052 AUSTRALIA n.nicholas at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au A homepage for the Association for the History of Language and _Dhumbadji!_ is available on the World Wide Web, and is *provisionally* located at . (This address is expected to change within the next two months.) The page includes a full listing of contents for past _Dhumbadji!_ issues. As readers should be able to see, a major focus of _Dhumbadji!_ has been palaeolinguistics, but we also welcome contributions from researchers working in traditional reconstructive historical linguistics, language change and grammaticalisation, language contact and lexical transfer, and any other field of research meeting the journal's stated aims. We look forward to hearing from you! -- ki egeire arga ta sthqia ta qlimmena; Nick Nicholas. Ling., Univ. Melbourne. san ahdoni pou se nuxtia anoijiata s_nickn at eduserv.its.unimelb.edu.au thn wra pou kelahda epnixth, wimena! stis murwdies kai st' anqismena bata. ADDRESS CHANGED FROM: -- N. Kazantzakis, _Tertsines: Xristos_. nsn at speech.language.unimelb.edu.au From martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de Thu Sep 19 11:54:59 1996 From: martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de (Fco. Javier Mart nez Garc a) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 13:54:59 +0200 Subject: Leiden: Indo-European Course Register Message-ID: Indo-European Course Register You can find now the Course Register for Leiden (Holland) See following URL: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/idg-ws96.html#Leiden From alderson at netcom.com Thu Sep 19 18:28:18 1996 From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:28:18 -0700 Subject: /hw-/ > /w-/ again In-Reply-To: (message from Larry Trask on Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:00:10 +0100) Message-ID: Larry writes: >I have occasionally seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a >contrast between a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar. (Anybody know if this >idea is still taken seriously?) Why should it not be taken seriously? There are different developments in the descendant dialects, after all. To take one example, were there no contrast between *k{^w} and *kw (if you will allow TeX-style notation for superscripts), we would expect the word for _horse_ to appear as Skt. **aca, Attic/Ionic **epos/**ipos, rather than the attested Skt. as^va, Attic (h)ippos, Ionic (h)ikkos. Other unexceptionable examples exist. Rich Alderson From alotz at aimnet.com Fri Sep 20 13:33:18 1996 From: alotz at aimnet.com (Deborah W. Anderson) Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:33:18 +0000 Subject: IE Newsletter Message-ID: A new edition of the Indo-European Newsletter has just appeared. It contains news, a list of new and forthcoming books and journals, brief book reviews, newly-available IE electronic resources, a list of upcoming conferences as well as essays. Among the "Brief Communications": --a summary by James P. Mallory on the "Conference on the Bronze Age and Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia" held at the University of Pennsylvania on April 19-21, 1996, a conference devoted to the mummies found in Xinjiang, China and their archaeological, genetic, and possible linguistic affiliation(s). --a short summary of the Second German Linguistics Annual Conference held at Madison, WI on April 26-28 by Christopher Stevens. The essays in this issue include: --two essays on recent developments in Insular Celtic, one on Celtic phonology and morphology (by Kim McCone) and the other on syntax and other matters (by Joseph Eska). --a contribution by Craig Melchert on recent developments in Anatolian. The newsletter is officially affiliated with the Indo-European Studies program at UCLA. Contribution levels (which pay for this bi-annual newsletter and support IE activities) are $10 for students, $20 for others ($25 for those outside the continental U.S.). Checks should be made payable to "FAIES/UCLA Foundation" and sent to: FAIES, 2143 Kelton Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90025. VISA and Mastercard are also accepted. For further information, please contact: Deborah Anderson at dwanders @violet.berkeley.edu (or: alotz at aimnet.com) Deborah Anderson Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Linguistics UC Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 From martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de Fri Sep 27 10:14:19 1996 From: martinez at em.uni-frankfurt.de (Fco. Javier Mart nez Garc a) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 12:14:19 +0200 Subject: All: In Memoriam Hartmut Katz (Munchen) Message-ID: Friday 27 September 1996 With the greatest sadness we have just learned that Hartmut Katz (Munich) died last night. Freitag, den 27. Sept. 1996 Wir haben soeben erfahren, dass Hartmut Katz (Munchen) in der Nacht zum 27.9. verstorben ist