At 5:30:38 PM on Friday, September 26, 2008,
david_russell_watson wrote:
[...]
> My question to the list in general is this: during the
> evolution of any language has a single phoneme ever been
> seen to split into two or more; merge yes, but split?
Sure: PScand *e followed by *a or *u in the next syllable
became /ja/ and /jo/ (later /jö/) unless preceded by *w, *r,
*l or immediately followed by *h in the next syllable. Thus
we have ON <jafn> 'even' from *eBna and <jo,rð> 'earth' from
*erþu. A non-initial example is <sjo,t> 'abode, home'
('seat') from *setu.
Brian