Re: [tied] OE "afor"

05-12-03 00:42, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> Thanks; I'd got the <o> of <a:for> stuck in my head and
> was thinking that the back vowel would block AFB, but of
> course it wasn't there. But while I'm thinking about it,
> why <o> in <a:for> and <e> in <æcer>? Front-back
> assimilation? Or is the representation of the unstressed
> vowel simply a bit unpredictable?

It isn't 100% predictable (e.g. we have <fugol> ~ <fugel> ~ <fugl>), but
despite all inconsistency there's a clear tendency towards front/back
harmony (at least in OE orthography) in such epenthetic vowels, e.g.
<hræfen> : <wundor>. At the end of the OE period, however, <e> came to
be the favoured spelling even after back vowels.

Piotr