At 10:29:08 AM on Monday, October 3, 2005, Grzegorz
Jagodzinski wrote:
> Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>> 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.
> Were they more frequent than "head" and "hawk"?
It seems to me that at this remove differences in frequency
would have to be fairly substantial before they could be
detected. I'd be surprised to find a substantial difference
in frequency between the 'raven' and 'hawk' words; they have
too much in common. The burden of proof would appear to lie
with anyone claiming such a difference. (By the way,
Layamon (early 13th c.) has <remes> 'ravens', but to judge
by the OED, the /v/-less forms of this word seem to have
been abandoned early.)
'Heaven' is certainly common enough in the written record,
but given how much of that is religious, that's hardly
surprising, and I can't say to what extent that frequency
can be extrapolated to everyday speech. In general I expect
small cardinal numbers, like 'seven', to be used pretty
heavily.
Brian