Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>"Trisyllabic shortening" is a ghost change, partly laid to
>>rest by recent analyses of early English quantitative
>>changes.
>
>
> That sounds interesting. Anything actually in print?
There have been a whole series of "revisionist" publications about early
English vowel quantity; the evidence for TRISH (as Roger Lass dubbed it)
is discussed by Donka Minkova and Robert P. Stockwell (1996. "The
Origins of Long-Short Allomorphy in English". [In:] Jacek Fisiak and
Marcin Krygier [eds.], _Advances in English Historical Linguistics_,
Berlin: Mouton. 211-39), and by Nikolaus Ritt (1994. _Quantity
Adjustment: Vowel Lengthening and Shortening in Early Middle English_.
Cambridge: CUP).
Piotr