Re[4]: [tied] Re: English Young (was: Indo-Iranian Vowel Collapse)

At 3:12:47 AM on Saturday, November 26, 2005, P&G wrote:

>> the question as to whether <eo> represents a genuine
>> diphthong applies very specifically to this context
>> (<geo>, <sceo>).

>> I have to agree with Lass that the diacritic
>> interpretation is elegant, but I admit that I've not read
>> a serious counter-argument.

> But <eo> occurs in other contexts (e.g. heofnum, ðeossum,
> , beoð, gebeorscipe, eorðan, etc) so it cannot be just a
> means of indicating the pronunciaiton of <sc> and <g>.

You are assuming that in <geo-> and <sceo-> the <eo> is a
unit, making these <g-eo-> and <sc-eo->, respectively; on
the diacritic interpretation the orthographic segmentation
is <ge-o-> and <sce-o->, just as <geong> is <ge-o-ng>.

> If it has a phonetic value in those contexts, why should
> we suggest that it doesn't elsewhere?

I'm going to refer you to Lass, _Old English_, §3.9.4 for
the argument (which I'm sure is also in Lass and Anderson);
I'm in the middle of marking a large stack of exams and
haven't time to do the case justice. I'll just say that the
two main points are (a) that palatal diphthongization is
phonetically unmotivated, and (b) that similar spellings
occur in places where diphthongization is never suggested
(e.g., <geong> 'young').

Brian