LL-L "Phonology" 2009.02.19 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 19 February 2009 - Volume 01
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Thank you for your response to my discussion of aspiration, Ingmar.

That was a good point about Danish. The link may be Jutish (if you count it
among the Danish varieties). If we are dealing with a continuum or with
Hanseatic influence is another question. I rather suspect it is a case of a
continuum, of an areal feature.

Two things about this:

   1. With the exception of intervocalic *d* (which is realized as a lax
   interdental fricative, i.e. as a lax ("sloppy") [ð]), these Danish
   (including Jutish) consonants are not voiced but are "devoiced" lenis: *b
   * and *g*, usually represented in descriptions as [b̥] ([b_0]) and
[gÌŠ]([g_0])respectively. So they are essentially unaspirated /p/ and
/k/ respectively,
   and they are indeed derived from *p* and *k.* I am contending that,
   technically speaking, they ought to be written *p* and *k* respectively.

   2. I don't think we can tell from which varieties this supposedly areal
   feature of aspirating only stressed syllables (shared by Danish, Low Saxon
   and American English) originally emanated. I guess it is not impossible that
   it was an areal feature already at the time when Saxons (then living at the
   mouth of the Elbe river), Angles (living in what is now Schleswig) and Jutes
   (living just north of there) emigrated to Britain and that they took it with
   them where it may have survived in certain English dialects, possibly in
   Wessex. I'm not too sure about it being due to a Celtic substratum, because
   I would expect it to be more wide-spread in Britain then. As you said,
   American English may have preserved and spread this regional British
   pronunciation. I do not think it is due to German influence in America. In
   Germany it is minority pronunciation and even in Northern Germany has been
   considered sub-standard for a long time, being essentially a Low Saxon
   substratum feature limited to Missingsch and Missingsch-derived Northern
   German, i.e. to low-prestige German varieties.

 Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA


From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <roerd096 at PLANET.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2009.02.12 (02) [E]

Well, maybe it's just a "natural" tendency to aspirate only in stressed
syllables, and that Low Saxon and American English coincidently both
followed the same path?

And don't forget Danish, with "Peder", "peber", "pige",as opposed to the
very closely related Norwegian Bokmaal...
That voicing of intervocal consonants is such a universal tendency as
well, I mean: we find that in very many todally unreladed languages.

In English, it may originate from Celtic influence, since varieties spoken
in areas closest to Celtic have it the most, am I right?
Maybe that's where US English has it from.
Or maybe American pronunciation just reflects popular British prono of a
few centuries ago?

There were many German immigrants in the States, a lot of them from Low
Saxon speaking areas, maybe they helped establish this prono...

Just my zwopfennig

Ingmar


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

Hi, everyone!

I would like to revisit and possibly get your thoughts about consonant
aspiration.

It seems to me that among the modern Germanic language groups there are
indications of genealogical traits mixed with areal features due to language
contacts.

If you look at Low Frankish (including Dutch) and Low Saxon, two closely
related groups, you find that presence and absence of aspiration is a major
distinguishing feature. There is no aspiration in Low Frankish (and indeed
in *all* Frankish groups), while with the exception of far-western dialects
(with Low Frankish contacts) Low Saxon has aspiration in syllables with
primary stress, virtually identical to the pattern in mainstream American
English (as opposed to other English varieties in which stress makes little
difference).

As I said, Frankish can be generalized as having no aspiration. Going
farther south we find Alemannic, most of whose varieties have strong
aspiration. Going east from there we find (Austro-)Bavarian and Thuringian
with no aspiration (?), where at the old and middle stages supposed
"lenition" led to ambiguous spelling (e.g. *buter ~ puter* 'butter'). Going
farther east we are well and truly in the "new" territory that used to be
mostly Slavic speaking and became home for immigrants from all over the
west, with considerable influx of Franks from as far away as today's
Netherlands and Belgium. Assumedly, the "Central German" varieties, which
include the "Upper Saxon" and Silesian ones, are products of language
mixing. However, they are predominantly without aspiration, which may be due
to a continuum with neighboring Thuringian, to Frankish influx or to both of
the above. However, going north from there and entering the eastern
extension of Low Saxon we find that aspiration predominates, be it because
of the persistence of this feature (despite Low Frankish influx), because of
aspiration in the Slavic substratum languages or because of both of them.

Frisian seems to be a mixed bag: aspiration in Germany under previous Saxon
domination and no aspiration under Dutch domination.

Scandinavian varieties are predominantly aspirating ones. In Danish,
aspiration is so strong that it has led to the creation of affricates (/t/
-> [ts]). In Islandic, aspiration is so strong that consonants come to be
pre-aspirated in certain environments (a feature Icelandic shares with the
Turkic Yughur language of Gansu, China, for instance).

And so we arrive at English, the "new" kid on the block, the love child of
Old Saxon, Old Frisian and other players on previously Celtic-speaking soil.
Here we find a preponderance of aspiration with the exception of a few
(northern?) dialects. A Saxon feature that spread, perhaps facilitated by
Celtic aspiration? As mentioned earlier, mainstream American English by and
large follows the same aspiration pattern as does mainstream Low Saxon (i.e.
aspiration of voiceless stops in syllables with primary stress only; e.g.
Peter [ˈpʰitɻ̩] ~ [ˈpʰiɾɻ̩],* Low Saxon [ˈpʰe(ː)tɝ] ~ [ˈpʰe(ː)ɾɝ],* versus
British English [ˈpʰiːtʰɚ] ~ [ˈpʰiːʦ ʰɚ] and German [ˈpʰeːtʰɐ]). (*This
permitted the development of the medial t-flap in American and Low Saxon.)

Are there any relevant thoughts and theories out there?

Thanks and regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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