LL-L "Phonology" 2002.01.27 (01) [E]

Sun Jan 27 21:32:39 UTC 2002

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Phonology"

This is a summary of and a few further notes on the recent
discussion between myself and Ron concerning the nature of
the phoneme or allophone represented by <wh> in modern Scots
spelling, <quh> in Middle Scots.

I opened the discussion by pointing out that a voiceless "w"
occurs in both Scots and English when it follows a voiceless
stop. For example, the second letters of words like "twist",
"place", "pride" and "clear" are all devoiced, but the devoiced
and voiced versions of these letters are treated as allophones
of the same phoneme.

In Scots, however, an unvoiced "w" exists as a phoneme in its
own right, in words such as "what", "whist" and "wheasel". My
question was how this should be treated phonologically -
should the devoiced "w" of a word such as "twist" be treated
as an allophone of /w/ in Scots because the devoicing can be
explained as a phonological process, or should it be treated
as an allophone of the unvoiced /W/ phoneme in Scots, simply
because this phoneme exists in the language?

Treating the devoicing of the "w" of words like "twist" to be
a phonological process as in English, we would be writing /twIst/
in a phonemic transcription of Scots and [tw"Ist] in a phonetic
version (where I use a quote mark to indicate devoicing, ie a
little circle under the "w" in IPA). But treating all devoiced
"w"s in any position as allophones of the unvoiced /W/, we would
write /tWIst/ phonemically and [tWIst] phonetically.

Some points raised by Ron in reply were:

1. one could consider the diachronic aspects by comparing the
   distribution with that of English;
2. without diachronic aspects, either representation would be
   acceptable.

There was agreement at this point that ignoring diachronic
aspects seems to give a neater solution.

Ron mentioned the fact that our Dutch-speaking friends insist
that there is a phonetic difference between _f_ [f] and _v_ [v"]
in Dutch, to highlight some of the difficulties in reconciling
phonetic analysis with a native speaker's own perception of the
language. I pointed out that something similar occurred in Scots.
What is now spelt <wh> in Scots was spelt <quh> in Middle Scots,
and that the SND (Scottish National Dictionary) has a suggestion
that this spelling was due to the pronunciation [xW], so the [W]
could actually be seen as devoiced due to the presence of the [x].
This [x] is still heard vestigially in modern speech, which would
explain the difference in quality that Scots speakers perceive.
Ron pointed out that this means that [W] could be treated as a
devoiced allophone of /w/ in all cases, provided that the
omissible /x/ was accounted for in the underlying representation.

I suggested that instead of treating the /w/ in words like "twist"
as devoiced, simply assume that it is affected by the overlapping
aspiration from the preceding /t/, as is normal in Scots and
English and write /t(h)w/. Ron replied with a very interesting
article on the variety of phenomena to be found in world languages
that could be described as aspiration, and suggested writing the
phoneme as /(x)W/, with a parenthesized or superscript x to
indicate that it is "optional".

Conclusion
==========

No firm conclusion can be reached without further study of or
research on the historical linguistic processes involved in Scots,
but I personally am happy with Ron's suggestion to write the [x]
superscripted to show that it is optional. I am also tempted to
write it /(x)w/ (rather than /(x)W/), which might help to taking
into account diachronic aspects with English, provided the /(x)/
could be seen as a pre-aspiration in modern Scots (which would,
however, probably make it quite unusual in the context of "Anglic"
languages).

Further Notes
=============

1. During the discussion, a Scots-speaking correspondent made the
off-list comment that he didn't pronounce the /w/ voiceless in such
words as "twist". I find this hard to believe, as I would contrast
the French and Scots (or English) pronunciations of a word like
"ratatouille" by the fact that the /w/ (or /u/) semivowel after the
second "t" is pronounced voiceless in Anglic languages but voiced
in French. This may be an enlightening observation as it suggests
that the voicelessness of the /w/ is indeed caused by normal Anglic
aspiration, which doesn't occur in French, so that we could
trancscribe <tw> in Anglic languages as /t(h)w/.

2. In writing this summary I stopped to think about the pronunciation
of <quh> in Middle Scots. Taking the spelling just as it looks (as if
the Makars wanted to add "breath" to a sound otherwise written "qu") I
wondered if this was originally pronounced [kW]. This made me think
of the pronunciation of the corresponding words in Modern Icelandic.
For example, the interrogative pronouns "hver", "hvert", "hvað"
("who", "which", "what") &c, in which the <hv> is pronounced [hw"]
generally but sometimes as [k(h)v]. Is there possibly a Scandinavian
connection?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Thanks for the excellent summary, Sandy.

> I
> wondered if this was originally pronounced [kW]. This made me think
> of the pronunciation of the corresponding words in Modern Icelandic.
> For example, the interrogative pronouns "hver", "hvert", "hvað"
> ("who", "which", "what") &c, in which the <hv> is pronounced [hw"]
> generally but sometimes as [k(h)v]. Is there possibly a Scandinavian
> connection?

I rather favor the assumption that _quh-_ originally represented
something like [kwh], i.e., an aspirated [kw] whose aspiration is
distributed over both [k] and [w] (> [w"]), and that fricativization of
the [k] to [x] took place later.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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