From: G&P
Message: 66866
Date: 2010-11-09
>Or consider the fate of
-gh in English, which suddenly became unpronounceable, with multiple outcomes,
with no clear rules for which alternative was preferred.
Should we word that as, “no clear rules for which dialect form would survive into modern English in which context?”
The outcome in modern English is apparently chaotic, but that does not mean that the process was chaotic. The main thing that was unpredictable is the choice of the version we now use, and that choice is often moderated by context (e.g. plum duff, spotted dick, and dough.)
Peter