Re: [tied] Re: Mi- and hi-conjugation in Germanic

On 05-03-11 12:31, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:49:20 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
>
>>On 05-03-10 05:48, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>[BTW, why is there no fracture in <heht>? There should be,
>>>if the form is old].
>>
>>Not in Anglian, where diphthongs (long and short, of whatever origin)
>>were smoothed before velars.
>
>
> I see: Brook's Old English merely states that Anglian has
> fracture less often than WS, in particular not of /a/ (/æ/)
> before lC and sometimes rC (ald, barn), but it is silent
> about /h(C)/.

The official name of the rule is "Anglian Smoothing". It applies
whenever a diphthong is followed by a velar, either directly or with an
intervening liquid, e.g. ne:ah > ne:h, weorc > werc. It isn't the
failure of breaking (as in the case of <ald> etc.), but an actual
secondary monopthongisation, since it applies to the Anglian reflexes of
*eu, *iu and *au as well (details in Campbell, Hogg or any other
competent account of OE phonology).

Piotr