From: dgkilday57
Message: 66833
Date: 2010-11-01
>This trifurcation in reflexes of OE -o:d can be explained through back-formations and analogical processes without recourse to hippie phonology. MnE <good>, <hood>, <stood> have the regular nuclear reflex of the OE monosyllables. The nucleus of MnE <blood> and <flood> evidently reflects extraction from dissyllabic compounds inherited from OE. Note OE <Bo:cland>, MnE <Buckland>; OE *bo:cmaest, ME <bukmast>, MnE <buckmast>. Early ME <blodles> 1225, <blodwurt> 1250 unfortunately do not show what the vowel was doing, but they do render it plausible that <bloodless> and <bloodwort> show the REGULAR pronunciation of inherited compounds. With <flood>, possibly extraction occurred from <floodgate> (or its ME equivalent, since we have <flud> c1425), but I can find no old attestations of the compound. With <rood>, we have a weak noun in OFris, OS, ON, and early ME (<rode> 1225, pl. <roden> c1290), so the vocalism is just as regular as it is in <food> (OE <fo:da>, ME <uode>, <fode>). With <mood>, very likely we have back-formation from <moody> (OE <mo:dig>, ME <modi> c1205). With <brood>, I believe we are dealing with the analogy <feed>:<food>::<breed>:<brood>. In order to breed a brood, farmers feed it food.
> --- 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_.