Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Approaching the changes
- 2 Reconstructing OSL
- 3 Widening the meaning of OSL
- 4 A suprasegmental view of OSL
- 5 Summary: OSL refined
- 6 Homorganic Lengthening
- 7 Shortenings
- 8 Epilogue: explaining Middle English Quantity Adjustment
- Appendix I OSL
- Appendix II HOL
- Appendix III SHOCC
- Appendix IV TRISH
- Notes
- References and further reading
- Index
6 - Homorganic Lengthening
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Approaching the changes
- 2 Reconstructing OSL
- 3 Widening the meaning of OSL
- 4 A suprasegmental view of OSL
- 5 Summary: OSL refined
- 6 Homorganic Lengthening
- 7 Shortenings
- 8 Epilogue: explaining Middle English Quantity Adjustment
- Appendix I OSL
- Appendix II HOL
- Appendix III SHOCC
- Appendix IV TRISH
- Notes
- References and further reading
- Index
Summary
Introduction
As follows from what has been said so far, this chapter will not simply describe the diachronic correspondences normally referred to as lengthening of vowels before homorganic consonant clusters. Rather, it will focus on their relation to the lengthenings discussed in chapter 1, and pursue the question whether HOL and OSL can be regarded as one great quantity change or whether they represented essentially different phenomena. If the data normally accounted for through HOL turn out to be compatible with the generalizations inherent to formula (1) of chapter 5, this will be taken to mean that there was indeed only one change. Should they turn out incompatible, however, it will have to be accepted that OSL and HOL were separate sound changes in their own right and that no unified account is possible. The hypothesis that formula (1) of chapter 5 ‘predicts’ all Early Middle English quantity changes will then be regarded as falsified.
The description of HOL will be carried out along the same lines as that of OSL. With the help of the Oxford Etymological Dictionary a list of more than 200 potential inputs that have survived into Modern English has been drawn up. It gives a representative view of the long-term implementation (that is to say, the constraints) of the process in question (see appendix II). The list has then been subjected to a similar kind of analysis as the Minkova corpus.
In its widest interpretation, Homorganic Lengthening was a process by which short vowels were lengthened, if they were followed by clusters of two consonants.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Quantity AdjustmentVowel Lengthening and Shortening in Early Middle English, pp. 81 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994