--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > It may have been a
> > capricious, incomplete sound change, like the lowering of Early
> Modern
> > English /u/, which took place in <butter> but not in <butcher>.
> Or dialect mixture?
It seems too regular for that to be significant. The environments
where the change did not occur are:
[b|p|f|w]_(t)S
[b|p|f|w]_l
There are some exceptional environments of the form [b|p|f|w]_lC where
the change does take place, (e.g. _bulge_), but the rule seems
complicated rather than prone to irregularities. The nearest to an
irregularity I can think of is _pulse_ (/V/) versus _fulsome_ /u/
but the latter is rather obviously a compound of _full_.
Richard.