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

[Robert Whiting]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 5:15 PM

>> 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.

> [Ed Selleslagh]

> I doubt that: the Romans didn't have the English v-sound, and the letter u
> (written as v) was used as a semi-vowel close to w, or as a vowel. So they
> didn't need an extra letter to transcribe Greek wau, if they had had to.

Originally Latin had a vocalic [u] and a semi-vowel [w], both written with
the <u/v> graph (the two shapes were simply variants of the same
grapheme).  Since [u] or [w] was predictable from the context, separate
signs were not needed.  This is exactly paralleled by the use of <i> for
both [i] and [j].  Later the semi-vowel [w] shifted to [v], but was still
predictable so there was still no need to specify with different signs,
but there was an increasing tendency to specialize the graphic variants
<u> and <v> for [u] and [v] respectively.  However, they remained more or
less interchangeable until the late middle ages.

<snip>

> BTW, the Greeks had their own problems with transcription of Latin: I think
> it was in Delphi (or was it Olympia - now Olimbía - ?) where I saw AKOAI
> on an ancient bath house, for Latin AQUAE.

Comes from not having a [w] sound.

>> 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?
>> <snip>
>> Bob Whiting

> [Ed]
> For your information: in Dutch, w is called 'we', pr. like Eng. 'way' (some
> Dutchmen will say 'vay').

As usual, Dutch is stuck in the middle between German and English.  German
has no [w] sound so they use the <w> graph for [v] (since they use the <v>
graph for [f]).  To them the name of the <w> graph is 'vay' (just like
the name of the Hebrew letter waw is vav in German).  Dutch has a [w]
sound and uses the <w> graph for it, but has adapted the name from German
('vay' > 'way').

> And Double-U (pr. Dub'ya) is still another thing, nothing to do with its
> shape either :-)

cf VV and W or UU and W.  With a little imagination you can see how
double-u (or double-vay) got its name.  Interestingly, Finnish does not
have a [w] sound, but has the letter (originally used for writing [v], in
fact, words with <w> and <v> are alphabetized together as one letter).
The name of the letter in Finnish? -- kaksois-v "double-vay".  Kaksois-v
is not a loan translation of dub'ya, but it is of double-v.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi