Old English Breaking and Syllable Structure

2005 ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Mike Davenport
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Syllable Structure

Conditions for the voicing of Old English fricatives, II: morphology and syllable structure

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Fulk
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Personal Names

Old English fricatives at points of morpheme juncture are studied to determine whether they conform to the rule of voicing between voiced sounds that applies morpheme-internally. Should we expect a voiced or a voiceless fricative in words like OE heorð-weorod, Wulfweard, and stīðlīce? The evidence examined regards chiefly compounds and quasi-compounds (the latter comprising both forms bearing clear derivational affixes and ‘obscured’ compounds, those in which the deuterotheme has lost its lexical independence), though a small amount of evidence in regard to voicing before inflectional suffixes is considered. Evidence is derived from place-names, personal names, and common nouns, on the basis of Modern English standard pronunciation, assimilatory changes in Old English, modern dialect forms, post-Conquest and nonstandard Old English spellings, and analogous conditioning for the loss of OE /x/. A considerable preponderance of the evidence indicates that in compounds as well as in quasi-compounds, fricatives were voiced at the end of the prototheme when a voiced sound followed, but not a voiceless one. It follows from the evidence that there was no general devoicing of fricatives in syllable-final position in Old English, despite Anglo-Saxon scribes' use of <h> for etymological [Γ] in occasional spellings like <fuhlas> and <ahnian>. Old English spellings of this kind need be taken to imply nothing more than a tendency for <h> and <g> to be used interchangeably in noninitial positions, due to the noncontrastive distribution of the sounds they represent everywhere except morpheme-initially. Rare early Middle English spellings of this kind may or may not have a phonological basis, but they cannot plausibly be taken to evidence a phonological process affecting /v, ð, z/.

scholarly journals Phonological constraints on morphology: Evidence from Old English nominal inflection

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Adamczyk ◽  
Arjen P. Versloot
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Nominal Inflection ◽  
Early English

Abstract Studying the complex interaction between phonological and morphological developments involved in the extensive reorganisation of nominal inflection in early English, we focus, primarily, on new inflectional endings that emerged by analogy in etymologically suffix-less paradigm forms of r-stems and root nouns. We argue that the analogical changes were essentially reactive to phonological developments, and to a large extent predictable in statistical terms. Investigating correlations in corpus data, we identify the factors that affected the probability that new analogical endings were adopted. The predictors of the directions of analogical change that we show to be robust include the syllable structure of the root, the salience of inherited and analogical inflectional markers, as well as their absolute and relative frequencies.

A multifactorial account of analogical developments in Old English nominal paradigms

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Adamczyk
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Old English ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Multivariate Logistic Regression ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Functional Factors

Abstract The present paper focuses on the interaction of factors that conditioned analogical developments in Old English nominal paradigms. They include especially the absolute and relative frequency of occurrence, the salience of inflectional exponents, the formal inflectional overlap across paradigms, functional factors, semantics and syllable structure (stem weight). They could work in two opposite directions, namely towards retaining the etymological inflections or they could facilitate the adoption of analogical endings. The significance of individual factors for the reorganisation of nominal paradigms is investigated by employing a statistical analysis (multivariate logistic regression) which allows us to rank them. The analysis demonstrates that the attested inflectional patterns can largely be explained by an interaction of three factors, namely salience and frequency, which can be linked to the cognitive aspects of storage and retrieval of linguistic information, and the formal inflectional overlap of forms across paradigms, which is a manifestation of analogical pressure in the paradigms.

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