thy thigh etc. (external sandhi in English)

[Douglas G Kilday]

Robert Whiting (17 May 2001) wrote:

>On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 Douglas G Kilday <acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> but one should not assume that this distinction arose by the
>> selective voicing of initial [T] to [D] in what Whiting loosely
>> labels "function words".

>First, the concept of "function words" is not a Whiting loose label.
>"Function word" and "content word" are technical terms in grammatical theory,
>and hardly my invention.

>Interestingly, Webster's Encylopedic Unabridged Dictionary (1994) has a longer
>definition of "function word":

>    function word, a word, as a pronoun or preposition, that is
>    used in a language as a substitute for another or as a marker
>    of syntactic relationship; a member of a small, closed form
>    class whose membership is relatively fixed.  Cf. empty word,
>    full word.

>but has no definition of "content word" using instead the term "full word":

>    full word, (esp. in Chinese grammar) a word that has lexical
>    meaning rather than grammatical meaning; a word or morpheme
>    that functions grammatically as a contentive. Cf. empty word.

>I don't particularly like this last part since, although "contentive" fairly
>obviously means "content word" (rather than something that makes Mr Borden's
>cows give milk), the dictionary nowhere defines either contentive or content
>word.

I thought it was Mr. Carnation's cows who were contented. Anyhow, I'm not
going to dispute the fact that "function word" and "content word" are
well-established labels. What I don't like about the above is the twisted
oxymoron "functions as a contentive" when contentives and "function words"
are allegedly mutually exclusive. This is a dysfunctional family of
definitions. Contentives are no less functional in language than
non-contentives. Since the latter govern contentives, I propose replacing
the bonehead term "function word" with "gubernative".

>In fact there is a sort of Zipf's Law for this because function words are
>relatively few in number but are used very frequently while the number of
>content words is huge (and growing constantly) but the individual words are
>much rarer in use.

Excuse my skepticism, but I can't believe the _net_ number of contentives in
a given language is growing constantly. As new contentives enter a language,
others exit. Lexica don't have rubber walls.

>Basicly, content words tell what is being talked about and function words tell
>what is being said about it.  You can see this by taking a simple sentence and
>stripping out the functional elements leaving the content words:

>   I saw the book on a shelf in the room.
>     see     book      shelf        room

Let's try this (admittedly archaistic) variant:

    I saw thee on a shelf in the room.
      see           shelf        room

According to your analysis elsewhere, pronouns (particularly those with
[D-]) are "function words" which according to the above do _not_ tell what
is being talked about. So I was _not_ talking about "thee", and in fact it's
impossible to talk about "thee". Something's still murky.

>But this [Finegan ap. Comrie] was published some 13-14 years ago.  Perhaps it
>is no longer the mainstream opinion.  Perhaps I missed your review of this
>work where you pointed out to the misinformed multitudes that "what [these
>words] share is definiteness, not some murky 'functionality'."  If so, please
>tell me where it is published so that I can see what evidence you base this
>assertion on.

The assertion is based on the intuition of a semi-naive native speaker
(myself).

>Besides, function words wasn't my label to start with.  I originally referred
>to them as deictic words and pronouns.  Somebody else introduced the term
>function words, presumably because this is how they are usually referred to in
>the literature, and I just let it ride because, well, they *are* all function
>words, and function words is easier to write than pronouns and deictic words.

Obviously I failed to follow the thread back into the archive. I would have
had no objection to "deictic words and pronouns".

>'Through' is also often a function word, although not invariably since it is
>also used as an adverb and an adjective.  Furthermore, it has a lexicalized
>stressed variant 'thorough' (always an adjective), something that is
>characteristic of function words.  I suspect that what keeps 'through' out of
>the group of function words with initial [D] is that it doesn't appear to be a
>word with a pronominal/deictic 'th-' base as the other members of the group
>do.

If memory serves, both are from OE <thurh>, so it is "through" which is the
partially grammaticalized unstressed variant of "thorough", not vice versa.
I suspect the fact that it is _not_ derived from a pronominal or deictic
base, but is akin to Lat. <trans> 'across', <intrare> 'to cross in, enter',
Skt. <tarati> 'he crosses over', etc. has a lot to do with its lack of
definiteness and lack of [D-].

>Definiteness is a functional (grammatical) category.  But where is the
>definiteness in 'though'?  As a conjunction, 'though' is a function word, but
>is no more definite than 'but' (with which it is sometimes synonymous).  It
>can be adversative, disjunctive, or conditional, but not definite.  But, even
>though it lacks any overt "definiteness," it can still be considered a deictic
>or a demonstrative.

That is how I was considering it. If you "point out" or "demonstrate"
something, it acquires definiteness. As a conjunction, "though" means
"despite the fact that" and "the fact" is definite. As an adverb, "though"
means "nevertheless", which specifies a definite degree of difference
(nothing). I'd like to see a sentence in which "but" and "though" are
interchangeable.

>But I will agree partially with your premise.  These words *are* all function
>words, but the fact that they have initial [D] is not specifically because
>they are function words, but because they share some other feature.  So you
>were on the right track; you have just taken a disastrously wrong turn.

Thanks (I think).

>So it is not true that "no special signs for 'v' or 'z' are found" in OE.
>They are there, but they aren't used frequently and generally only in foreign
>words (except that 'u' is sometimes substituted for wen or for <f> in
>intervocalic position in native words).  What you can say without fear of
>contradiction is that they are not used to indicate contrasts between [f] and
>[v] or [s] and [z] because there aren't any in OE.

I stand corrected.

>> [Did] morphemic boundaries in OE necessarily make adjacent
>> fricatives unvoiced in connected speech?

>Probably.  Otherwise words like 'nothing' (OE na:thing < na:n + thing) and
>'anything' (< f:nig + thing) would doubtless have [D] rather than [T] since
>these compounds came into existence in OE.  Since the environments around the
>boundaries in these words are invariant, surely the sandhi-type rule that you
>propose below would have been more likely to operate here than in the more
>variable environments of the boundaries between words.  I can't see any
>alternative:  if there was a sandhi rule operating across morpheme boundaries
>it would have fixed 'nothing' and 'anything' with [D] already in OE.
>Similarly, compounds like 'within' and 'without' would have been fixed with
>[D] at an early date by such a rule.  Since none of this happened, it speaks
>against the existence of such a rule.

Obviously, had I thought of these examples, I could have spared myself some
embarrassment.

>Sounds like the writer/copyist [of the "Cuckoo Song"] was Irish or Welsh.  I
>must say that I have never heard of this sandhi rule for OE.  Can you give me
>a reference to a publication of it so I can see if there is any other evidence
>besides the _hapax phenomenon_ <bucke uerteth>?  Surely if such a sandhi rule
>could be proved for OE, those who claim massive Celtic influence on English
>would be all over it like a shot even though it is only similar, not
>identical, to Celtic lenition (mutation).

>But if <bucke uerteth> is the only evidence, this is certainly too flimsy a
>foundation on which to build such an elaborate structure.  There are simply
>too many other ways to account for this single piece of evidence.

Yes, I now see that it was incredibly foolish to erect such a structure on
the flimsy foundation of a single letter. Of course, that was back in the
last millennium. I'm a lot older and wiser now.

>And all this assumes that the writing <uerteth> actually represents the verb
>'fart', which is not universally accepted.  Admittedly, OED takes it this way,
>but others have taken it as a form of a verb based on _vert_ 'green'
>(Cambridge History of American and English Literature).  More convincing in my
>view is a loan based on Latin _vertere_, French _vertir_ 'turn'.  There are
>quite a number of borrowed English compounds based on this root ('avert',
>'divert', 'convert', 'revert', 'pervert', invert, etc.), but the bare root
>seems unknown as a verb (although common in other words:  'version',
>'vertigo', 'vertex', 'verse', 'versus', etc.).  The native cognate is found in
>the suffix '-ward(s)'.  Perhaps this hapax legomenon is a borrowing that never
>became established or even an aphetic form of some compound used to preserve
>the meter (this is, after all, a song).

I sincerely doubt that <uerteth> represents a borrowing from Latin or
Romance, given the bucolic nature of the song and the absence of other
non-AS vocabulary.

>Although there is nothing philologically unsound about a derivation from
>'fart', it seems out of place in the context of the song.  No one has ever
>been able to explain to me why a farting buck is a transparent metaphor of
>spring (from eating all the newly sprouted greenery?).

That was precisely the explanation given to me years ago by a professor of
English literature, and in this case authority has appeal. Consuming large
quantities of fresh vegetation produces flatulence.

>In keeping with with the rest of the song and the parallelism within this
>couplet, some more visible physical activity rather than an auditory or
>olofactory one would be more appropriate.  Thus "the bullock starts, the buck
>turns/twists (about)" is better suited to the context and the structure of the
>song.  The main advantage to translating "the bullock starts, the buck farts"
>is that it preserves the rhyme and scan of the original (bulloc sterteth/bucke
>verteth).

Since the previous couplet has the clear auditory parallel of a bleating ewe
and lowing cow, your argument has some weight. It is less clear that the
growing seed, blowing (fermenting?) mead, and springing wood are intended as
a visual parallel. At any rate, the song is too short to allow any firm
stylistic conclusions to be drawn. I would guess that here, as in folk-songs
generally, the anonymous author was more concerned with phonetic parallelism
(i.e. rhyming and scansion) than with higher-level parallelism.

>> It appears that this large influx of words beginning with [v]
>> which does not alternate allophonically with [f] has forced the
>> older words beginning with [f/v] to abandon the voiced allophone
>> and become words beginning with invariant [f].  That is, this
>> influx of loanwords has created a new phonemic distinction /f:v/
>> in initial position which the orthography of Chaucer's time (late
>> 14th cent.) regards as fully established.

>Rather, it was the French (Latin) contrast between [f] and [v] that was
>imported in pairs like 'failen' and 'vailen' and 'coffer' and 'cover' or
>'coffin' and 'coven'.  English now had to deal with words with inherent [f]
>and inherent [v] in contrastive positions.  'Vers' "verse" probably was
>reborrowed from French in ME along with 'fers' "chess-queen".  But this time
>there is an [f]/[v] contrast so the two sounds can't be treated as variants.
>Furthermore, the fact that OE <f/uers> was not fixed with initial [f] but with
>initial [v] runs counter to your assertion.  So the [f]/[v] contrast was just
>imported along with the words.

Yes, I see your point. ME swallowed the contrast whole. The model I proposed
introduced unnecessary complexity.

>If there are a lot of borrowed words with initial [v], especially when some of
>them contrast with words with initial [f], either borrowed or native, and
>there are a lot of borrowed words with intervocalic [f] then speakers either
>have to nativize the borrowed words with initial [v] to [f] and nativize the
>borrowed words with intervocalic [f] to [v] (and lose the contrast in both
>cases) or they have to accept the [f]/[v] contrast as phonemic.  Obviously
>they did the latter.  But this certainly doesn't require a sandhi rule for its
>implementation.

Agreed.

>While 'for' and 'fore' might have flopped back and vorth between initial [f]
>and [v] for centuries, surely invariable compounds like 'before' and 'afore'
>would have been fixed as *<bevore> and *<avore> within a week if there was a
>sandhi rule operating that voiced fricatives in a voiced environment across
>morpheme boundaries.  So phonemicization of [v] doesn't require a sandhi rule
>for its implementation.  In fact, it is easier to explain without one.
>Otherwise you have to say that native words in initial [f] and borrowed words
>in initial [v] is just another huge statistical anomaly.

Yes, unless one argues that unvoiced fricatives were regular in OE and early
ME in utterance-initial position (including words uttered in isolation). But
then "before" and "afore" could only be explained by special pleading
(restorative rules, different categories of morphemic boundaries) and that
would just create a bigger mess. It seems better just to abandon my
proposal.

>> The status of initial [T:D] in Chaucer is equivocal.
>> Contractions like <artow> 'art thou' and <seistow> 'sayest thou'
>> suggest that <thou> already had invariant [D], since the old rule
>> would require [T] here and [tT] usually contracts to [T], which
>> would yield *<arthow> etc. However, this argument is extremely
>> weak. Statistical analysis of Chaucer's alliterations in "th"
>> might resolve the issue, but I am not aware of such a study.

>Extremely weak is perhaps an understatement.  Actually, in addition to
>contractions, <t> in 'thou' (and the other cases of this pronoun) is often
>found after [s], [t], and [d].  Thus you find things like 'bi-hold tou'.  Any
>conclusions about whether initial <th> in these words was voiced, either
>invariantly or environmentally are very iffy.  But I will agree that the
>possiblility that it was already voiced is not excluded.

What we need then is the study of Chaucerian alliterations. Perhaps someone
did this for a master's thesis, and the result is gathering dust in the
basement of an obscure college.

>> At any rate it is clear that the English /f:v/ distinction
>> resulted from loanwords and was well established by Chaucer's
>> time. The /s:z/ distinction, if not already made by Chaucer,
>> followed shortly. It can be attributed partly to loanwords,
>> partly to the earlier establishment of /f:v/ as phonemic.

>There are other factors, which you seem anxious to ignore, involved in the
>phonemicization of the voiced fricatives as well.  One of these is the
>collapse of the English short vowel system and the loss of final inflectional
>'-n' followed by loss of final [@] (schwa).

>Another factor was the loss of intervocalic long fricatives [ff TT ss] which
>were simplified into [f T s] producing intervocalic unvoiced fricatives which
>could contrast with the intervocalic voiced fricatives [v D z] which had
>previously been simply allophones of [f T s] in intervocalic position.  Since
>it was no longer possible to predict [f T s] or [v D z] based on intervocalic
>position, something had to happen to the intervocalic voiceless/voiced
>fricatives that were no longer predictable from their environment.  For
>instance, modern 'since' comes from a contraction of ME 'sithens' (with
>adverbial genitive -s) which in turn came from OE 'siththan' (itself a
>compound of 'si:th' "after" and 'tham' or 'thon' [dative or instrumental of
>"that"]).

I wasn't "anxious to ignore" these factors, but dealing with them would have
doubled the length of my posting (OK, for you that's not a valid
consideration).

>> The [T:D] opposition was left as an orphaned allophonic pair,
>> very difficult for speakers to maintain, especially in initial
>> position. They would have been obliged to enunciate some words
>> with invariant initial [f], [v], [s], [z] and others with
>> variable [T] or [D] according to the preceding sound. Under these
>> circumstances any mechanism tending to fix [T] or [D] in
>> particular words would have operated rather strongly.

>Now it's my turn to say that I don't see why.  According to you this sandhi
>rule had been operating for over 500 years and now, with the loss of two of
>the allophone pairs to which it applied, speakers are suddenly anxious to get
>rid of it.  One of the principles of sound change rules is that they operate
>until they no longer have anything to operate on and then they disappear.  It
>should have been no more difficult to maintain this alleged sandhi rule for
>[T]/[D] than it was to maintain it for the other fricatives in the face of
>other fixed voiceless/voiced oppositions (as in the stops).

The sandhi rule, by hypothesis, only applied to three pairs of allophones in
the first place. You have succeeded in convincing me that the initial /f:v/
and /s:z/ oppositions were acquired directly from contrasting loanwords,
with the assistance of the loss of conditioning factors in other positions.
But with the sandhi rule superseded for two of the three pairs, what's so
outlandish about proposing that speakers would have trouble maintaining this
otherwise obsolete rule for the one remaining pair, given its phonetic _and_
phonologic similarity to the other two? Or do you generativists simply deny
that this sort of analogical process can happen?

>But I must say that you paint a vivid picture of the difficulties faced by
>14-15th century speakers of English.  One can almost see the churls and thanes
>tossing and turning on their straw pallets or feather beds, driven to
>sleeplessness by the difficulty of maintaining the allophonic alternation of
>initial [T] and [D] now that [f] and [v] and [s] and [z] have become phonemic
>contrasts.

Yes, I think I'll turn to painting, since I don't seem to have much of a
future as a grammarian.

>> In my opinion this probably began with the statistics of
>> utterances: demonstratives like <the> and <this> commonly follow
>> prepositions, which in a majority of cases end in voiced sounds.

>And you call functionality murky.  Do you have any other examples of
>syntactically conditioned phonetic change?  I have seen a lot of ontological
>ingenuity expended by classical phonologists to devise a purely phonetic
>environment for some obviously necessary sound change, but this is a new one.

This proposal does not involve "syntactically conditioned" phonetic change.
The conditioning itself is purely phonetic.

>> Once the invariant [D] was fixed in the most common
>> demonstratives, it would have spread by analogy to the other
>> "th"-words of pronominal origin which carry definiteness.

>Are there any "th"- pronouns that are indefinite?

I forgot you "do grammar". There should have been a comma, between "origin"
and "which". (BTW, since commas carry meaning, does this mean they can't be
phonemes, suprasegmental or otherwise?)

>Besides, this doesn't account for the spread of this feature to the
>conjunction 'though' which does not have any of the characteristics you deem
>necessary for this change; i.e., it lacks definiteness, it never follows a
>preposition (or even an article).

I don't agree about the definiteness, but the other objection holds, so this
feature must have been spread by analogy.

>This is one reason why the mainstream theory that [D] in these words is a
>lenition of [T] in unstressed forms of function words is easier to believe.
>Rather than basing the distinction on "definiteness," categorizing these words
>as function words accounts for all of them (which "definiteness doesn't do
>[cf.  'though']).  Besides, 'that' is not infrequently used in an indefinite
>sense ('That's just the way it is').

That's _not_ an indefinite sense of "that"; it's a definite sense without
explicit antecedent. The definiteness is definitively proved by the fact
that "that" is equated with "_the_ way it is" (note the _definite_ article).

I concede that lenition is easier to swallow than my statistical proposal.
But it does _not_ account for all the words, since some of them ("though",
"thus", and the 2nd-sg. pronouns) seldom or never have unstressed forms
comparable to "the". Whatever model we use to start the process must be
augmented by analogical spread.

>Function words often have stressed and unstressed forms.  In fact, we even
>have a nursery rhyme to imprint on young minds the fact that unstressed
>'beside her' rhymes with 'spider'.

This isn't a "fact" in my dialect, where "spider" has the schwa-like nucleus
and "beside her" does not. The rhyme only works in my dialect with an
unnatural pronunciation of "spider".

>       [...summary of defects of DGK's posting...]
>
>       This [model of fixing [D]] ignores the fact that words that lack
>       "definiteness" have this feature ('though') while words
>       that have "definiteness" ('three', 'thirty', 'thirteen',
>       'thrice') lack it.

Numerals are non-definite. I can say "Three dogs pooped on the porch"
(indef.) or "Those three dogs etc." (def.). OTOH numeral adverbs like
"thrice" are indefinite. If I want to be definite, I must use an analytic
form: "those three times".

>       In other words, according to your scenario initial [D] in
>       English is a marker of "definiteness" and initial [T] is a
>       marker of "non-definiteness."  Thus the occurrence of
>       initial [T] or initial [D] in a word can be predicted on
>       the basis of some inherent semantic or lexical quality of
>       the word and vice versa.  So, if what you say about words
>       with initial [D] sharing "definiteness" is true, then the
>       distinction between initial [T] and [D] is not phonemic
>       because the occurrence of one or the other predicts
>       something about the meaning of the word in which it occurs.
>       Phonemes are units of sound, not of meaning.  Morphemes are
>       units of meaning.  If a sound predicts meaning, then it is
>       not (just) a phoneme.  If the only contrast that you have
>       involves a prediction of meaning, then you can't use that
>       contrast to prove a phonemic distinction.

I don't believe I stated or implied that initial [T] was a marker of
anything. Most English words in [T-] are non-definite (neither inherently
definite nor indefinite) but some proper nouns acquire definiteness by
context or agreement.

I must say I agree with the argument in your other postings that [D-] is
morphemic in ModE. But I do _not_ agree that this precludes initial [T:D]
from being phonemic. If your argument above is valid, then not only is that
contrast not phonemic, but the contrast of initial [D] with _any_ other
phoneme is not phonemic. For example, "that" contrasts with "cat", but the
[D-] of "that" is morphemic, while the [k-] of "cat" is not. According to
your analysis, initial [D] and [k] are _not_ distinct phonemes. So is [D] an
allophone of [k] in this position, or is [D] something other than a phoneme?
Maybe just a plain phone? (A geologist once told me "That's not a rock; it's
a vein-filling"...)

>The distribution of initial [T] and [D] is quite predictable in English.  I
>can quite easily conceive of a phonologic rule that predicts their
>distribution.  Saying that there isn't one is like putting on a blindfold and
>then saying "I can't see."

>Your claim that classical phonology can't predict the distribution of initial
>[T] and [D] in English is simply a limitation of classical phonology, not a
>reason for denying the obvious truth of the predictability of initial [T] and
>[D] in English.

If I prefer classical phonology to hard-rock, new-wave, punk-rap (or
whatever your phonology is) it's a matter of taste. I'm not trying to deny
any truths, obvious or otherwise. Your phonology may be ideal for reducing
synchronic languages to compendia of generative rules. My interests are
primarily diachronic and historical (and I am grateful for being set
straight on these matters of ME phonetics). In my opinion, description with
your phonology runs the risk of creating synchronic "rules" which serve only
to neutralize historical events or processes, and this obscures what I
attempt to study.

DGK