Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T07:25:22.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonemically contrastive fricatives in Old English?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2011

DONKA MINKOVA
DONKA MINKOVA*
Affiliation:
Dept. of English, UCLA, 149 Humanities Building, P.O. Box 951530, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1530, minkova@HUMNET.UCLA.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article addresses two recent hypotheses regarding the history of the English fricatives /f/–/v/, /s/–/z/, /θ/–/ð/: the hypothesis that phonemicization of the voicing contrast occurred in Old English, and the related claim that the reanalysis of the contrast was due to Celtic substratum influence. A re-examination of the arguments for early phonemicization leads to alternative interpretations of the observed voicing ‘irregularities’ in Old English. The empirical core of the article presents the patterns of alliteration in Old and Middle English; this kind of evidence has not been previously considered in evaluating the progress of the change. The analytical core of the article is dedicated to the dynamics of categorization based on edge vs domain-internal contrasts, the relative strength of the voicing environments, and the distinction among fricatives depending on place of articulation. A comprehensive LAEME and MED database of all relevant forms reaffirms the traditional position regarding French influence for the phonemicization of voicing for the labial fricatives. The categorization of the contrast for the interdental fricatives is a language-internal prosodic process, and the history of the sibilants requires reference to both external and internal factors. The shift from a predominantly complementary to a predominantly contrastive distribution of the voiced–voiceless fricative pairs has been occurring at different rates for a whole millennium. The claim that phonemicization is attributable to Celtic influence in Old English is empirically and theoretically unsubstantiated.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 31 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, J. M. 1988. The status of voiced fricatives in Old English. In Anderson, J. M. & Macleod, N. (eds.), Edinburgh studies in the English language, 90–112. Edinburgh: J. Donald.Google Scholar
ASPR = The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. Krapp, George Philip & Van Kirk Dobie, Elliot. 1931–53. 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred. 1988. Voice opposition in the system of Old English spirants. In Kastovsky, Dieter & Bauer, Gero (eds.), Luick revisited, 119–26. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Bennett, William H. 1955. The Southern English development of Germanic initial [f s ƿ]. Language, 31 (3), 367–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benua, Laura. 1997/2004. Transderivational identity: Phonological relations between words. In McCarthy, J. (ed.), Optimality Theory in phonology: A reader, 419–37. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2007. Diachronic phonology. In de Lacy, Paul (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of phonology, 497–517. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blevins, Juliette & Wedel, Andrew. 2009. Inhibited sound change: An evolutionary approach to lexical competition. Diachronica 26 (2), 143–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunner, Karl. 1960. Die englische Sprache, vol. 1. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ching, , Marvin, K. L. 1996. GreaZy/greaSy and other /Z/-/S/ choices in Southern pronunciation. Journal of English Linguistics 24, 295–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dekeyser, Xavier. 1986. Romance loans in Middle English: A reassessment. In Kastovsky, D. & Szwedek, A. (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries, 253–65. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter,CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietz, Klaus. 1997. Die stimmhaften Spiranten des Mittelenglischen und ihre phonologische Entwicklung. Anglia 115, 165–92, 469–86.Google Scholar
DOE. 2009. The dictionary of Old English, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, www.doe.utoronto.ca.Google Scholar
Duggan, Hoyt & Turville-Petre, Thorlac (eds.). 1989. Wars of Alexander (EETS SS 10). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fisiak, Jacek. 1985. The voicing of initial fricatives in Middle English. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 17, 3–23.Google Scholar
Fougeron, C. & Keating, P. A.. 1997. Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101, 3728–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fulk, Robert. 1992. A history of Old English meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Fulk, Robert D. 2001. Conditions for the voicing of Old English fricatives, I: Phonology. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 6 (1), 55–77.Google Scholar
Fulk, Robert D. 2002. Conditions for the voicing of Old English fricatives, II: Morphology and syllable structure. English Language and Linguistics 6 (1), 81–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, John. 1995. Phonological Theory. In Goldsmith, John (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory, 1–23. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harris, John. 1990. Derived phonological contrasts. In Ramsaran, Susan (ed.), Studies in the pronunciation of English: A commemorative volume in honour of A. C. Gimson, 87–105. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1988. Metrics and phonological theory. In Newmeyer, Frederick (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, vol. II, 220–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 2000. Gradient well-formedness in Optimality Theory. In Dekkers, Joost, van der Leeuw, Frank & van de Weijer, Jeroen (eds.), Optimality Theory: Phonology, syntax, and acquisition, 88–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 2009. Introductory phonology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard. 1992. A grammar of Old English, vol. 1: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2005. Diachronic evidence in segmental phonology: The case of obstruent laryngeal specifications. In van Oostendorp, M. & van de Weijer, J. (eds.), The internal organization of phonological segments, 319–54. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1966. Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet. Language 42 (2), 399–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1909. A modern English grammar on historical principles, vol. 1: Sounds and spellings. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1937. Voicing of spirants in English. English Studies 19, 69–71.Google Scholar
Jones, Charles. 1989. A history of English phonology. London and New York: Longman Linguistics Library.Google Scholar
Jordan, Richard. 1934/1974. Handbook of Middle English grammar: Phonology, translated and revised by Crook, Eugene. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kager, René. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Keating, Patricia. 2006. Phonetic encoding of prosodic structure. In Harrington, J. & Tabain, M. (eds.), Speech production: Models, phonetic processes, and techniques (Macquarie Monographs in Cognitive Science), 167–86. New York and Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Ruth (ed.). 2003. The Three Alliterative Saints’ Hymns (EETS, O.S. 321). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kirchner, Robert. 1998. An effort-based approach to consonant lenition. PhD dissertation, UCLA.Google Scholar
Krishna, Valerie (ed.) 1976. The Alliterative Morte Arthure. New York: Bert Franklin.Google Scholar
Kristensson, Gillis. 1994. Discussion of Nielsen (1994). In Laing, Margaret & Williamson, Keith (eds.), Speaking in our tongues: Proceedings of a colloquium on medieval dialectology and related disciplines, 51–3. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D. S. Brewer.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian. 1996. The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
LAEME. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325. 2007. Compiled by Margaret Laing & Roger Lass. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html. © University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Laker, Stephen. 2009. An explanation for the early phonemicisation of a voice contrast in English fricatives. English Language and Linguistics 13 (2), 213–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LALME. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen, 1986, compiled by A. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels & M. Benskin, with the assistance of Margaret Laing & Keith Williamson.Google Scholar
Lappe, Sabine. 2007. English prosodic morphology. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1991–3. Old English fricative voicing unvisited. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 25–7, 3–46.Google Scholar
Lavoie, Lisa. 2002. Subphonemic and suballophonic consonant variation: The role of the phoneme inventory. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 28, 39–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavoie, Lisa. 2009. Testing consonant weakness phonetically. In Minkova, Donka (ed.), Phonological weakness in English: From Old to Present-Day English, 29–46. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindblom, Björn & Maddieson, Ian. 1988. Phonetic universals in consonant systems. In Hyman, Larry M. & Li, Charles N. (eds.), Language, speech, and mind: Studies in honour of Victoria A. Fromkin, 62–80. London: Routledge,Google Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1914–40. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, 2 vols. Stuttgart: Bernhard Tauchnitz.Google Scholar
Lutz, Angelika. 1991. Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonantenverbindungen. Linguistische Arbeiten, 272. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MED. The Middle English Dictionary. 2001. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/. © Regents of the University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2003. Alliteration and sound change in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2008. Prefixation and stress in Old English. Word Structure 1 (1), 21–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, Hans F. 1994. On the origin and spread of initial voiced fricatives and the phonemic split of fricatives in English and Dutch. In Laing, Margaret & Williamson, Keith (eds.), Speaking in our tongues: Proceedings of a colloquium on medieval dialectology and related disciplines, 19–31. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D. S. Brewer.Google Scholar
OED. The Oxford English Dictionary. http://dictionary.oed.com/.Google Scholar
Offord, M. Y. (ed.). 1959/1967. The Parlement of the Thre Ages (EETS 216). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1997. Aerodynamics of phonology. Proceedings of the Fourth Seoul International Conference on Linguistics [SICOL], Korea, 92–7.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet. 2002. Word-specific phonetics. In Gussenhoven, Carlos & Warner, Natasha (eds.), Laboratory phonology 7, 101–39. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2009. Celtic influence on Old English: Phonological and phonetic evidence. English Language and Linguistics 13 (2), 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumacher, Karl. 1914. Studien über den Stabreim mittelenglischen Alliterationsdichtung (Bonner Studien zur englischen Philologie XI). Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlagsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Silverman, Daniel. 2002. Dynamic versus static conditions in prosodic morphology. Linguistics 40 (1), 29–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolkien, J. R. R. & Gordon, E. V. (eds.). 1967. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, rev. Davis, Norman. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Trigg, Stephanie (ed.). 1990. Winner and Waster (EETS 297). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wakelin, Martyn F. 1972. English dialects: An introduction. London: Athlone.Google Scholar