From: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
Message: 41004
Date: 2005-10-03
> Grzegorz Jagodzinski wrote:Were they more frequent than "head" and "hawk"? And especially than "has"
>
>> The Zipf's law says that long words must be shortened (irregularily)
>> if they are used with enough frequency. So, they needn't be very
>> frequent but enough frequent. OE he:afod or hafoc were _relatively_
>> too long (or too frequent, this is the same) - so they had to be
>> shortened. The same about the standard [fA.rid] <forehead> which was
>> not _very_ frequent - but too frequent when compared to its length.
>
> What about seofon '7', heofon 'heaven', hræfen 'raven', de:ofol
> 'devil', etc.? For some of these items there was vacillation in ME
> (and cf. Scots deil), but all of them have kept their /v/'s.
>
> Piotr