From: Torsten
Message: 66788
Date: 2010-10-23
>3) Danish
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > I would have to be a phonological hippie to buy into the notion of
> > "optional soundlaws". No rocket science is required to see that
> > any word in any language could be derived from any word in the
> > same or any other language, merely by tailoring the "optional
> > soundlaws" to achieve the desired result. Philology would
> > collapse into anarchy.
>
> While acknowledging an optional sound law is an admission of defeat,
> and any explanation that depends on one is thereby weakened, they do
> appear to be real. Good examples of optional sound laws include:
>
> 1) The Modern English 3-way split of the reflex of OE o:, e.g.
> Modern English _blood_, _good_ and _mood_.
>
> 2) Classical Latin /ae/ merging with /e:/ ('rustic') or /e/ in
> Romance.
>
> There is very strong evidence that mergers initially progress word
> by word, and that offers a very good opportunity for an optional
> sound law to arise as an incomplete change or for the order of sound
> laws to be variable, as in _blood_ v. _good_, where it seems that
> shortening at different times has led to different vowels in
> present-day Modern English.