Re: Optional Soundlaws (was: IE *aidh- > *aus-tr- 'hot, warm (wind)'

From: Torsten
Message: 66788
Date: 2010-10-23

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> --- 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.

3) Danish
eg [e?γ] > [e?I] "oak", bøg [bø?γ] > [bø?I]
vs.
steg [staI?] "steak", løg [loI?] "onion",

cf Swedish
ek [e:k], bok [bu:k], stek [ste:k], lök [lö:k]

but the point is that the constrast in Danish was once part of a set of shibboleth allophones separating 'rustic' from 'upper Copenhagen' sociolects, which has now been neutralized and the two forms have undergone lexical canonization based on idiosyncratic circumstances of the individual entry. I imagine similar processes took place eg. in Rome when the old Patrician/Plebeian (Latin/Sabine?) divide dissolved in favor of something new.


Torsten