LL-L "Phonology" 2008.01.04 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  04 January 2008 - Volume 02
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From: ipm7d at oi.com.br
Subject: The Vowel Shift

Dear friends,

  I wonder if Danish has been or not affected by the
Great Vowel shift.

 It seems that English, German, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish
underwent the same process from long ? to /u/ as for English in the
process b?k > book.
But in Danish they say Bog as if they were saying /bawg/.

  Am I right?

[Ivison dos Passos Martins]

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

Hi, Ivison!

It's great to have you back.

I added your name, because having one's name appear is a rule (
http://www.lowlands-l.net/rules.php).

I'm sure others will respond more aptly, but for now I venture the
supposition that Danish diphthongization of the sort you described is
limited to a vowel before *-g*, which, depending on the dialect, often comes
to be deleted, as in *dag* [daw] 'day'.

I don't consider this to be a matter of vowel shift but a matter of a modern
phonological rule. A similar thing happened in Old to Middle English, for
instance in the case of Old English lāg > Modern English "low", Scots *law*.

For /g/, especially syllable-final /g/ after a back vowel, to change to [w]
is a very common occurrence among the world's languages. It is particularly
widespead among the Altaic languages, such as in the case of Turkic **t**ā**
g* 'mountain' > *tağ* ~ *taw *~ *too* in various modern Turkic languages.

Regards, and enjoy your summer!

Reinhard/Ron
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