Return of the minimal pairs (when is a morpheme not a morpheme?)

[Douglas G Kilday]

Robert Whiting (29 May 2001) wrote:

>Now for the interesting part.  The Latin alphabet did not have a
>sign for the [w] sound (mostly because it disappeared from Greek)
>and used the <u/v> graph instead.  Much later, the medieval
>Norman scribes began writing the u/v graph doubled (uu/vv) to
>indicate the English [w] sound because they were unfamiliar with
>the English letter wyn or wen.  This Norman double-u (or to the
>French, double-vay) became the normal sign for the [w] sound and
>once again, this is the only letter whose name reflects its shape
>rather than its sound.  Outrageous coincidence that the old <w>
>and the new <w> are the only letters in their alphabets named for
>their shapes?  Not really -- if the [w] sound hadn't disappeared
>from Greek, the letter would probably have made its way into the
>Latin, and thence into the English alphabet with a name
>reflecting its sound and wouldn't have had to be reinvented.
>What it shows is that what goes around, comes around.

What goes around may also take a "disastrously wrong turn". The Greek letter
for [w] _did_ make its way into Latin as the letter F, and the loss of [w]
from the Attic and Ionic dialects has nothing to do with it. The Italian
alphabets are derived from the Chalcidian, whose dialect retained [w]. The
key player here is [f], which occurred in Etruscan and the IE Italic
languages, but not in ancient Greek. Early Archaic Etruscan used the digraph
FH or HF (transcribed <vh>, <hv>) for this sound. Late Arch. Etr. introduced
the symbol 8, which superseded the digraph for writing [f]. By this time,
the Latins of Praeneste had acquired the alphabet from Etruscans, including
the convention of writing FH for [f]. As the Latin alphabet went its
separate way, FH was reduced to F, and the less common usage of F for [w]
was replaced by V, which now stood for [u] or [w] in Latin.

As for W being the only (English) letter whose "name reflects its shape
rather than its sound", what about H? The etymology of ModE <aitch> is
disputed, but derivation from MFr or OFr <hache> is hardly questioned, and
this word also means 'battle-axe'. It seems better IMHO to posit naming the
letter in OFr on the basis of resemblance to the double blade of a
battle-axe, rather than referring it to an unattestable VL *hacca or *accha,
supposedly invented out of nothing to exemplify the former sound of a silent
letter (among illiterates).

DGK