LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.07 (02) [E]

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From: Travis Bemann <tabemann at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.06 (05) [E]

> From: Ivison dos Passos Martins <ipm7d at OI.COM.BR>
> Subject: Great Vowel Shift
>
> Hi,
>
>    I have been trying to find a dialect or maybe a language which hasn't
> been totally affected by the Great Vowel Shift. This would probably help
> to know approximately how Old English sounded. Long vowels shifted. So the
> word gód in OE (which rhymed with modern low) now sounds /gʊd/.
>
>    An old Dutch priest friend of mine who lived here told me that some
> dialects have a different pronunciation for boek, shoe, and other words
> where oe would normally sound as modern /u/. Unfortunately he doesn't live
> here any more. And he said there were also dialects which had words such
> win /ween/ for wine 'Wijn". Which dialect has kept much of the ancient
> pronunciation without been affected by the Great Vowel Shift? Can we find
> such behavior in german dialects or even English dialects?
>
> Another question:
>
> Take the word goed, which sounded /go:d/ in old Dutch and the word koe,
> for instance– Am I right if I say that they only came to sound the same
> [oe - /u:/] because of the Great Vowel shift?

For starters, there is no unified Germanic "Great Vowel Shift", the
term referring only to such sound shifts in Anglic dialects (which had
their own local variations). While there has been similar vowel shifts
in other Germanic languages, such as in many High German and Low
Franconian dialects and in Norwegian and Swedish dialects, their
similarity to said shifts in Anglic dialects are only coincidental.

For starters, the shifts in High German and Low Franconian involved an
early breaking of /e:/ of certain origins (which may have actually
originally been /ea/) to /ea/ (if it were not already that), /ia/, and
eventually /i@/. There was a similar early breaking of /o:/ to /ua/ or
/uo/ and eventually /u@/; thanks to umlaut, there also arose /y@/ at
some point along the way. These steps are very much different from the
course of events that occurred with the Great Vowel Shift in Anglic
dialects, and thus show how the similarity of the two were only
coincidental. Much later, there were two sets of changes which
occurred in many but by no means all High German and Low Franconian
dialects. One of these changes was the monophthongization of /i@/,
/u@/, and /y@/ as /i(:)/, /u(:)/, and /y(:)/; this did not happen in
most Upper German dialects. The other of these changes was the
diphthongization of /i:/, /y:/, and in High German /u:/ as (generally
closing) diphthongs; this did not happen in West Flemish, Zeelandic,
or Alemannic. Hence the actual results that appeared were quite
similar to those with the Great Vowel Shift in Anglic, and yet the
actual path taken to such was very different from that in Anglic.

In the case of most Norwegian and Swedish dialects, a similar but far
more limited shift occurred. The first was the centralization or
fronting of /u:/ (along with /u/), similar to such in Low Franconian.
After that, /o:/ and later Old Norse /Q:/ (early Old Norse /A:/ and
/Q:/) were shifted upwards, so they became /u:/ and /o:/ respectively;
there likely was an intermediate diphthongal step in most dialects,
due to such now often being narrow diphthongs and due to diphthongs
being still attested for such in some North Germanic dialects. Mind
you that there actually is a wide range of internal variation in the
treatment of Old Norse long vowels in North Germanic dialects, as
shown by the likes of the Setesdal dialect and Elfdalian, which have
general diphthongization of non-low Old Norse long vowels; the seeming
homogeneity of the treatment of such in modern Norwegian and Swedish
largely being an artifact of relatively recent dialect loss.

----------

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

Thanks a lot for this erudite summary, Travis.

For the sake of "completion," would you be so kind as to explain how Low
Saxon, Frisian and Scots fit into the scheme of things?

Scots (which is Anglic), for instance, did not participate in the
diphthongization of [u:] (e.g. *house* ~ *hoose *[hu(:)s]), and it
participated in the diphthongization of [i:] only "partly" (or "half of the
way"): [@I] ~ [@i]. The latter "half-way" shift has begun again in Modern
Australian English where high monophthongs have begun developing into rising
dipthongs: [i:] > [Ii] ~ [@i] (as in "she", "beat" and "me"), [u:] > [Uw] ~
[@u_"] (as in "do", "loop", "pool"), with lower onsets after labials. I
think it's kind of interesting that the same shift appears to occur twice.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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