LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.07 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 07 July 2008 - Volume 04
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.06 (05) [E]

From: Ivison dos Passos Martins <ipm7d at OI.COM.BR>
Subject: Great Vowel Shift

>   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/.

I think there is already a pretty good idea of how Old English sounded,
you don't need to find out by way of other Germanic languages and dialects.
I'm sure someone of the English speaking guys/ladies here can give you
some interesting links about it. But you might find out at the internet
yourself as well, if you tried

Ingmar

Ivison:
>   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?
>

There are a few dialects with "ween" for "wijn", but only one or two small
ones. I think the Low Saxon of Urk island, and some Betuwe South Guelders
(Low Franconian) dialects. It is an intermediate stadium between original
[i:] and present day [EI]. It also depends how your friend pronounced EE
in "ween"; in Standard Dutch it would be [e:I], but "ee" is used in
dialects spellings for monophthong [e:] as well. An interestinmg fact for
you, Ivison, is that in the Dutch of your neighbours in Suriname, "ee"
[e:I] is the standard pronunciation of Dutch ij/ei, as is "oo" [o:U] for
Dutch ou/au [aU].

Ingmar

Ivison again:

>Another question:
>Take the word goed, which sounded /go:d/ in old Dutch and the word koe,
>for instanceâ€" Am I right if I say that they only came to sound the same
>[oe - /u:/] because of the Great Vowel shift?

No. They always sounded the same. First both with [o:], now both with [u].
Again: there's a lot of info to be found at the world wide web, Ivison.

Ingmar

----------

From: Travis Bemann <tabemann at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.07 (02) [E]

> 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.

Low Saxon and Frisian did not participate in either the Anglic Great
Vowel Shift or the shifts described above in Low Franconian and High
German, but many Low Saxon dialects have had their own
diphthongizations independent of such or due to the influence of Low
Franconian and or High German. As for Scots, what happened with /u:/
is that /o:/ was already fronted to /2:/, and as a result there was no
driving factor for /u:/ to be diphthongized; as for /@I/, that just
reflects an older form of what had been /i:/ that has since been lost
in most English dialects (Canadian Raising notwithstanding).

----------

From: Travis Bemann <tabemann at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.07.07 (02) [E]
> 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

I forgot to mention, though, that while Frisian did not participate in
the Anglic Great Vowel Shift per se nor the shifts in Low Franconian
and High German, there have actually been similar vowel raising and
diphthongization in various Frisian languages. I would probably be
inclined to treat such as distinct from both, despite the superficial
similarities present.
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