From: andythewiros
Message: 66791
Date: 2010-10-23
>Is this English 3-way development of OE *o: before /d/ possibly due to the preceding consonant? I.e. after a labial it becomes /u:/ (<mood>, <food>), after /l/ it becomes /V/ (<blood>, <flood>), and after other consonants before /d/ it becomes /U/ (<good>, <hood>)?
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> ________________________________
> From: Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@...>
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sat, October 23, 2010 12:39:04 AM
> Subject: [tied] Optional Soundlaws (was: IE *aidh- > *aus-tr- 'hot, warm
> (wind)')
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> --- 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_.
> I would ask if this split is universal or only limited to Southern and Midlands
> English. I heard /blud/ (rhyming with American "good", not /bl@.../ in Liverpool
> and to a lesser degree on the Isle of Man. Yet, to my American ear, in Chester,,
> only a half hour away on the train, it sounded like they were speaking "The
> Queens'." My guess is that it is not universal throughout England and Scotland
> and that individual choices were made among different dialects, that the masses
> chose elite forms when those acquired some type of prestige or cachet, i.e. as
> in "varsity" vs. university, glamour vs. grammar, etc.
> Remember that in NYC there is the marry /meR-iy/, merry mE-Riy/ and Mary
> mAE-riy/ split, but in Midwestern, Southern and Appalachian, it's all /meR-iy/
> BTW: Does this split exist in the UK?
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> 2) Classical Latin /ae/ merging with /e:/ ('rustic') or /e/ in Romance.
> This happened in Vulgar Latin, didn't it? Before Romance split up? Again, it may
> have been that the poor, hearing Vulgar at home and Classical from the elite,
> selected between the two.
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> 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.
>
> Richard.
>