Re: English Young (was: Indo-Iranian Vowel Collapse)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

>
> At 8:47:13 PM on Thursday, November 24, 2005, Rob wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
> > wrote:
>
> >> At 4:49:12 PM on Thursday, November 24, 2005, Rob wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> What do you mean by "breaking"?
>
> >> Here it's the diphthongization of earlier /æ/ to /æa/.
>
> > I see. If /æa/ was indeed the phonetic value of <ea>,
>
> It obviously isn't being offered as such: those are slants,
> not square brackets. Phonetically [æa] is a possibility,
> I suppose, but [æ&] seems likelier.

Sorry about that; of course I should have used brackets when talking
about phonetics. I agree that [æ&] seems likelier than [æa].
However, why was <ea> used and not <æa> vel. sim.?

> > that is. I think it may rather have been /E/.
>
> I presume that you mean [E]. This slot is already occupied
> by /e/, and the two follow different trajectories in ME and
> PDE.

Something else I'm wondering is how a distinction between <ea> and
<éa> (presumably the lengthened form of the former) could have been
maintained (or was it?).

> In any case, there's no real doubt that the OE diphthongs
> were just that. Come to think of it, part of the evidence
> is breaking itself: it's most easily explained as the
> introduction of an epenthetic vowel between a front vowel
> and a velar or velarized consonant (/lC/, /rC/, or /x/),
> much as [mIlk] becomes [mIok] when the /l/ is sufficiently
> velarized.

I can understand that. However, given that OE had more sounds than
letters in the Roman alphabet, certain single sounds would have had
to be represented by two (or more) letters.

- Rob