On 2007-01-18 00:46, tgpedersen wrote:
> Perhaps the CP e-forms are regular and the West Saxon y-forms are
> anti-Kentish hypercorrections?
But the y-forms (at least in the singular) are found everywhere outside
Kentish, not just in WS, and are in many cases much EARLIER than the
Kentish change of y(:) > e(:), which was completed ca. AD 900.
Hypercorrect inverted spellings with <y> for <e> (e.g. <fyt> for /fe:t/
and <yfter> for efter < æfter) are found sporadically in Kentish itself
at the time of the change (the second half of the 9th c.), but not in
the other dialects (which makes them pro-WS rather than anti-Kentish).
Piotr