LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.09.18 (02) [D/E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 19 September 2006 * Volume 03
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From: 'Scat' [Scat at cfl.rr.com]
Subject: LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.09.18 (01) [E]

I tracked my baby daughter's speech in a notebook, starting with
her first babblings. She included all common pronunciations of
consonants in European languages, including the single tap r, the
rolled r, and the uvular r and well as dental/aveolar and released/
unreleased consonants and all of the vowel sounds as well as the
clicks of Hottentot. I encouraged her by speaking French one day
and Spanish the next. Her mother was with her all day long and spoke
nothing but English to her; therefore, her growth in English was not
stunted. She had trouble with {asks}, {asked}, and {spaghetti}. She
12 months old before the mastered those consonant clusters. My oldest
boy (two years younger) had the same successes and difficulties.
Scott Catledge

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From: Henno Brandsma [hennobrandsma at hetnet.nl]
Subject: LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.09.18 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Phonology
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> My question may come across as naive to so of you, but I'm going to
> ask it
> anyway, partly because I would like to know the answer and partly
> because in my
> experience simple questions are not always asked in expert circles.
>
> I am wondering about the possible reasons for the Continental
> Germanic language
> varieties -- the Lowlandic ones included -- have lost their old
> interdental
> fricatives: /þ/ (as in "THird") and /ð/ (as in "THere").
>
> Apparently this loss and replacement with /d/ (/t/ and /d/ in
> Frisian and Nordic)
> occured in all or most Continental varieties from Northern
> Scandinavia to the
> southern slopes of the Alps,* not in most insular varieties (such
> as British,
> Faeroese and Icelandic). Furthermore, this loss -- at least in
> written
> representation -- seems to have occurred roughly with the
> transition from Old to
> Middle varieties, approximately in the early part of the second
> millennium C.E.
> In German (i.e., in the south) it happened already at a stage that
> we now
> consider "Old."
>
> [* It may be argued that Danish has preserved intervocalic and
> final /ð/ (written
> _d_) or that intervocalic and final Danish /d/ has the allophone
> [ð]. Similar
> arguments can be made with regard to _d_ ~ _ð_ in Älvdalsmål of
> Sweden; e.g.,
> _glyödẽ_ ~ _glyöðę_ ["glj9De~] 'glowed', _guod_ ~ _guoð_
> [gwoD] 'good', though
> the fact that Älvdalsmål has preserved numerous ancient features
> may point toward
> preservation of /ð/.]
>
> Examples:
>
> English: þu > thu ~ thou ~ -tu ~ -tou > thou (Scots thoo)
> Frisian: thu > du

Modern West Frisian "do" or "dû" (latter is eastern dialect), Town
Frisian has "dou"

> Saxon: thu > du > du
> Norse: þú > du (Icel. þú)
> German: thu ~ du > du > du
>
> English: þing > thing > thing
> Frisian: thing > ting

Modern West Frisian: ding (by Dutch influence, presumably, as
"tingje" (corresponding to Dutch
"(af)dingen" (verb) also exists)

> Saxon: thing > ding ~ dinc > ding
> Norse: þing > ting (Icel. þing)
> German: thing ~ ding ~ dinc > ding ~ dinc > Ding
>
> English: bāðe > bothe ~ beath > both (Scots baith)
> Saxon: bēðia > bēde > beyd(e)
> Norse: báð- > båd- (Icel. báð-)
> German: beide ~ bēde > bēde > beide

Older Frisian had "bee" or "bea", now "beide" (very possible Dutch
influence):
intervocal -th often disappears in Frisian: lea (Dutch "leden" [arms
and legs]),
bea (Dutch bede), "och hea!" (exclamation "o heden!" in Dutch) etc.

> English: þrí > threy ~ three > three
> Frisian: thri ~ thre- > tri

MWF: trije < *tri:a

cf also trie(d) (thread, Dutch draad)

> Saxon: thri- ~ thre- > drê > drey
> Norse: þrí- > tre (Icel. þrí-)
> German: drî ~ dri- > drî(e) > drei
>
> What may have provoked this Continental shift, and why did this occur
> Continent-wide and not on the more distant islands? I wonder if it
> started in
> German and spread from there.

In the now extinct dialect of Wangerooge (a variety of East Frisian,
like Saterlandic still is)
still had "th", but this dialect was very conservative (a very small
speaker base of 200 people,
quite isolated on an island, only contacts through fishing and trade
with Saxon speakers), eg
it had final full vowels as well (the above "lea" was "lithu" there,
with [u] sound at the end, and
fricative: almost literally the Old East Frisian form!).
Also, older Söl'ring (dialect of Sylt) and Fering had an interdental
fricative, say up to 50 years ago.
Note that all these cases are island dialects, so isolation
(relatively) could be a factor.

All other dialects had lost all traces of th in all more modern forms
(beyond Old Frisian):
in all dialects th (voiceless) became t (voiced a d), except in
Amrung (almost identical to Fering
except for this feature and some small vocalic differences), where we
have s- (especially
intially before vowels): like taarep (Fering) vs saarep (Amrung)
(village, cf Frisian terp, where
Dutch "terp" is a Frisian loan (vocalisme and consontism give it
away), releted Dutch "dorp", English -thorp,
Low Saxon "dörp" etc. (both Modern Low Saxon and Frisian have forms
that go back to (plural?)
umlauted (and unrounded) forms).

Henno

----------

From: Paul Tatum [ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.09.18 (01) [E]

Hello one and all,

Ron wrote:

> It is true that in Gaulish writing we find the Greek-derived letters
Θ and Ð/ð.
> But it is generally agreed that these did not represent interdentals
but /t/ (~
> /d/) and /ts/ (~ /dz/), since they tend to be used interchangeably
with t, d, ts
> and ds, possibly representing dentals rather than alveodentals. In
brief, Gaulish
does not seem to have had interdentals.

I thought it was generally accepted that Continental Celtic did have
dental fricatives, and that they are normally represented by Latin ,
because Latin did not have dental fricatives, and /t/ and /d/ were
felt to be the closest equivalent. If continental celtic had not had
dental fricatives, then there would have been no need to use theta and
"thorn", because the Greek had tau and delta to represent dental stops.
By using theta and "thorn", the writers of continental celtic seem to
indicate sounds indicated did differ from dental stops, and the most
natural assumption is that they were fricatives.

I think that /T/ and /D/ are in the group of phonemes which are at the
more ephemeral end of the stability range of phonemes and it is
"natural" for them to change easily into either dental stops or into
sibilants, a la the feature analysis of Chomsky and Halle (don't you
just love that lad Chomsky, he gets everywhere?) and there are very many
examples of this from around the world, and in that sense it not a
change to which a lot of weight can be attached (as opposed say to the
change of /D/ to /l/ in Frisian, which is a lot more unusual).

Perhaps the loss of the dental fricatives could be explained by the
fact that Germanic languages supplanted Slavic languages, which
likewise do/did not have dental fricatives? I do think it is very hard
to say what the causes of any particular change in a language or group
of languages is, especially when the evidence is so sketchy. All we can
do is say that such and such change occurred, and perhaps provide a
phonetic motivation for it in terms of other phonetic changes, such as
the series of changes that comprise the Great English vowel shift of
Tudor times. For early Europe, what is now France seems to have been
Gaulish speaking, and northern Spain seems to have been Celt-Iberian,
judging from inscriptions, but I think it's very hard to interpret the
evidence for the rest - the Romans wrote about "tribes" (I dislike that
word), some of which had Celtic names and others that had Germanic
names, but I find it hard to interpret that evidence in linguistic
terms. It's so easy to confuse ethnic/cultural identity, political
allegiance and the language spoken. Certainly in Tacitus and Caesar
there are groups who bear Germanic names, such as the Teutones, who
appear to be indistinguishable culturally and politically from peoples
who have Celtic names, that it makes the whole question of Celt vs.
German, or rather who was who, seem to be very questionable.

David Clarke wrote:

> English-speaking children seem to have difficulty in picking up the
"th" sound
> and often pronounce it as "f" (though not "s" or "t") for quite a
long time,
> requiring quite emphatic repeated correction from their parents
before they get
> it right.

Though emphatic repeated correction appears to have little or no effect
on the rate at which children acquire the 'difficult' sounds. Also
children acquire an awareness of correct forms (phonetic and
morphological) before they can actively use those forms themselves, to
the point that they will tell off parents for imitating their incorrect
forms.

> Perhaps, therefore, it is a sound that will normally disappear in
> languages fairly quickly if it arises, unless the speakers of the
language attach
> particular importance to it, as a sign of maturity or nationality.

This is the same line as I was talking about above, though I don't quite
understand how you can attach particular importance to any phoneme as a
sign of maturity or nationality.

Yours most ramblingly, Paul Tatum.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Phonology

Paul, I, too, used to assume that the said letters stood for interdentals in
Gaulish.  However, lately I have been reading here and there that it is now
assumed that they stood for /ts/, etc., which surprises me given that there is a
Greek letter for this affricate.

Thanks for the explanatory notes at the Frisian front, Henno.

Wangerooge Frisian is very interesting indeed, mostly because of its archaisms. 
Unfortunately, too little was recorded of it before its demise.

Below is a little piece followed by my translation.  Noth the "th" in _threttiin_
'thirteen'.  Note also the Low Saxon loans, such as the apparent calque
_fariinsmon_ (LS _varensman_ / _Fahrensmann_ 'seafarer', 'mariner') and _Kriich_
(< LS _kryg_ / _Krieg_ < German _Krieg_, replacing native _oorloog_).

"Miin Oopel weer 'n fariinsmon, dee wunnet up Wangerooch. Dait weer nuu wail soo
uum 't Jeer achtiinhunnert threttiin, fjirtiin. Wii haiden Kriich mit de
Fransoozen, un de Engelsen weeren up 'e Oostsee. Daa lai eenes Diis miin Oopel
mit siin Schip in de Wiizder far Anker. Dee must hooch Watter auftaiw, un hii un
siin Liuud haiden jam dilleliin too slaipen."

"My granddad was a mariner, and he lived on Wangerooge. It must have been around
the year eighteen hundred and thirteen, fourteen. We were at war with the French,
and the English were on the Baltic Sea. One day my granddad was lying at anchor
on the Weser River. He had to wait for the high tide, and he and his crew had
lain down to sleep."

My translation into Modern Northern Low Saxon:

"Myn oupa was [~ weyr] 'n varensman; dey waan up Wangeroug'. Dat was [~ weyr] wul
so üm 't jaar achtayn hunnerd dörtayn, veyrtayn. Wy harren kryg [~ oorloog] mit
de frantsosen, un de Ingelschen [~ Engelschen] weyren up de Oostsey. Daar leyg'
eyn dag myn oupa mit syn schip in de Werser voer anker. Dey müss 't hoge water
af-toyven, un hey un syn luyd' harren sik daal-legd tou slapen."

"Mien Opa was [~ weer] 'n Fahrensmann; de wahn up Wangeroog. Dat was [~ weer]
wull so üm 't Jahr achteihnhunnert-dörteihn, -veerteihn. Wi harren Krieg [~
Oorloog] mit de Franzosen, un de Ingelschen [~ Engelschen] weren up de Oostsee.
Daar leeg een Dag mien Opa mit sien Schipp in de Werser vör Anker. De müss 't
hoge Water aftöven, un he un sien Lüüd harren sik daalleggt to slapen."

The Wangerooge variety tends to be considered a Weser Frisian variety, the last
one to be extinct.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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