LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.06.27 (01 [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 27 June 2006 * Volume 01
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From: Dan Prohaska <danielprohaska at bluewin.ch>
Subject: Phonology

I tried to give the _own_  vs. _one_ examples twice, but your formatting
programme doesn't seem to take the usual <> brackets for graphs. So I'll use _x_
instead. The sentence was supposed to be:

"I should think that the distinction may have been imported into Standard
English as a practical dissimilation of homophones like _own_ and _one_ which
would both have been /o:n/.

Dan"

***

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

Subject: Phonology

"Hi again, Dan!  It's been great hearing from you again, by the way."

Nice to have something to contribute again! ;-)

SNIP

"This hypothetical Modern *[oUn] 'one' would have coincided with [oUn] (< MidE
_au(e)n_ < OE _aƽen_ ~ _agen_) "own" (cf. Scots _ain_ [e:n]; OS _ēgan_ > MidS
_Ä“gen_ > MLS ["E.Ig=N] ~ ["a.Ig=N])."

I agree. Note that _only_ shows the regular development.

"By the way, lets also mention that Afrikaans has been undergoing the beginnings
of "vowel breaking" as well, namely of the long mid-level vowels [e:] and [o:]. 
So I hear written _steen_ 'stone' as [stIE~(n)], [stI@~(n)], [stie~(n)],
[sti@~(n)] etc., and written _groot_ 'great' as [xrUOt] and [xruot].  In rapid
speech they (almost) sound like [stje~(n)] and [xrwo] respectively.  So we might
be able to observe "breaking in the making" there."

Breaking isn't such an unusual phenomenon at all. To return to the _one_-case, I
could imagine that West-Midland dialects might have fractured all ME /O:/ (from
OE /a:/) to something like [oO] or [OA] or similar with this breaking being
eliminated everywhere except in initial (and after initial _h_) position. But
that’s just a theory.

“What I also find particularly interesting is that Australian and New Zealand
English (also a few England English dialects, including Cockney) has been
developing high monophthongs into rising diphthongs, something like /ii/ -> [Ii]
~ [@I] and /uu/ -> [7M]; cf. "deed" [dIid] ~ [d at Id], "soon" [s7Mn], with (slight)
labializtion after labials; e.g., "bee" [b(w)Ii] ~ [b(w)@I], "pool" [p(w)7ML]. 
(These phonetics are in SAMPA script:
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/ipasam-x.pdf)  I believe that this is
similar to what in Late Middle English or Early Modern English happened to old
/ii/ and /uu/.  So you might argue that this is a "second round" of the same in
the mentioned dialects; e.g.; MidE _tid(e)_ ~ _tyd(e)_ *[ti:d(@)] > *[tVId(@)] >
ModE "tide" [taId]; MidE _hous_ *[hu:z] > *[hVUz] > ModE "house" [haUz].

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron”

I’ve noticed that, too. It seems that languages have a tendency to undergo
similar sound changes throughout their history. Many English dialects have [a:]
for ModE /aI/ (O/ME /i:/) which already happened in the change from
North-West-Germanic to OE *ai => OE /a:/.

Dan

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From: 'Stellingwerfs Eigen' <info at stellingwerfs-eigen.nl>
Subject: LL-L 'Phonology'

Henno wrote:
> "jitris" means "one more time", not just "one time" (at least to me).

Henno, You're quite right. I'm sorry.
Mit een vrundelike groet uut Stellingwarf,
Piet Bult

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