Re: [tied] Re: Indo-Iranian Vowel Collapse (was: IIr 2nd Palatalisa

At 4:54:22 PM on Thursday, November 24, 2005, Rob wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>> The form <cealf> is West Saxon, and, as Richard has
>> already pointed out, modern standard English is mostly
>> (East-)Anglian-based (it also has <cold> from Anglian
>> <cald> rather than West Saxon <ceald>).

> Aha. I was not aware of that. So it seems like the two
> dialects diverged in their treatments of */a:/ -- West
> Saxon fronted it (like Norse and German) while Anglian
> backed it (like Frisian and Dutch).

As I understand it, PWGmc */a/ > early OE /æ/; before /lC/,
/rC/, and /x/ this broke to /æa/ (spelled <ea>) in West
Saxon and retracted to /a/ (which was probably more like
[A]) in Anglian. (When the conditions for breaking weren't
present, /æ/ remained /æ/ except in Kentish in southwest
Mercian, where it became /e/.) Finally, short vowels and
short diphthongs were lengthened in late OE before such
voiced homorganic clusters as /ld/, so Anglian /kald/ >
late /ka:ld/ > ME /kO:ld/ except in the North.

> The question is, then, did palatalization occur before
> they diverged, or after?

Given that a number of such words show both /k/ and /c^/
dialectal variants, it would seem that the palatalization
was later (or at least was still active after the split).
Though I suppose that Scandinavian influence might have
reinforced /k/ in a considerable part of the Anglian area.

Brian