Re: [tied] Re: OE *picga

----- Original Message -----

From: Richard Wordingham

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 7:45 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: OE *picga

>> It's free variation, as far as I can see, just like there being no orthographic contrast between /k/ and /tS/ in Old English.

> Except before back vowels.

 

In stressed syllables, palatalised <c> [tS] occurred only before front vowels (developments like tSe:& > tSo: in <ce:o-> are late and hardly regular). We have <i ~ e> used in early West Saxon and late Northumbrian (rarely elsewhere) to indicate [tS] before back-vowelled inflections (<se:cean>, <þencean>, <e:cium>, but also without this device, <se:can>, etc., as always in late West Saxon). Such diacritic <i ~ e> was more typically used after <g> (for etymological *j) or <sc> to indicate the pronunciation [j] or [S(:)], as in <geong, giong, giung> alongside <iung, gung> (< *ju[:]nga-), <geoc> (also <iuc> < *juka-), <sceort> (< *skort < *skurta-), in early West Saxon and late Northumbrian also in unstressed syllables, as in <bisceop>, <fisceas>, <menigeo>, <secgean>, etc.

 

In Northumbrian runic inscriptions there were special letters for palatalised velars, but that's a different story.

> I can see *frocca > dialect 'frock' (cited in Falk & Torp, who propose a different derivation), but do you have examples of the mangled onset being more marked?  The other forms still seem to have a <-cga> suffix, unless one can derive 'wicga' from something like OE <wagian> = 'totter', 'sway' (>? 'wag') or an unattested ancestor of 'wiggle'.

How do you know that <docga> is not a pet-form of, say, <dock(-tail)>? No <doc> is attested in OE, to be sure, but a few external cognates could be scraped together. In personal names the "geminate plus -a" pattern is common (Wuffa is an authentic example, cf. Eadda from <e:ad-> plus anything).

 

Piotr