Teenage speak and beyond

[James A. Landau]

Alice Faber wrote:

Aside from that, the various rotations of the Great Vowel Shift took
place over the course of several centuries. It's only with a time remove
of half a millennium that it's possible (albeit not very sensible) to
see the GVS as a single, mammoth shift.

Dennis Preston wrote:
> The rotations are very similar to the Great Vowel Shift indeed, but
> why would one think that it was dormant all those years? The natural
> forces on vowel shifts seem ubiquitous; the social forces are another
> matter (which is where this discussion started).
>
> dInIs
>
>>
>>>  Poster:       "Landau, James" <James.Landau at NGC.COM>
>>>  Isn't this nothing more than a continuation of the Great Vowel
Shift,
>>>  re-emerging after about three centuries in a beyance?
>>>
>>>     - Jim Landau
>>
>> Wow! Three centuries? Who dug up the beyance after all these years?
>>
>> Or are three centuries in a beyance like four men in a balloon?
>>

No, "in a beyance" is a private joke of mine.  When I became a contractor for the FAA, my security clearance was "placed in abeyance", where it remained for quite some time (it may still be there).  Hence I always imagined a "beyance" to be a wheeled cart for holding file folders that was moved around TASPSO (The Army Staff Personnel Security Office) until somebody had the time to go through it.

I am certainly not an expert on the Great Vowel Shift, but when I first read about it, as a senior in college, the book I was reading said that the GVS had to have been a single process, albeit erratic and long-drawn-out.  Had one English vowel rotated while others remained static, English would have ended up with that vowel merging with its "target", which has not occurred.

     - James A. Landau

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