From: Rob
Message: 42241
Date: 2005-11-25
>If PWGmc */a/ > early OE /æ/, then were did OE /a/ come from?
> 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 beforeI would think that the palatalization was ongoing when West Saxon
> > 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.