Re: old nordic /z/

--- lilyby2003 <lilycat@...> wrote:

> Hello, I need your help.
> I am writing my master thesis on phonological
> developments of English
> and Danish in historical comparison. My question
> concerns the voiced
> sibilant /z/ which was derived from */s/ by Verner's
> Law. In English
> this sound became /r/ in all positions quite early
> and thus
> disappeared from the phoneme system for some time.
> Around the 6th-7th
> century it came back, however, when all voiceless
> fricatives became
> voiced between other voiced segments. Thus, /s/ >
> /z/ again.
> In Old Nordic there was a similar development, but
> the literature
> says that it affected /f/ and the interdental /th/
> only.
> Vernerian /z/ had become 'palatal r', i.e. /z~R/ at
> that stage in
> word-final positions and had been assimilated or
> lost in other
> positions. Now my question: why the hell was there
> no new /z/
> from /s/ like in English?? Or was there, but it was
> not reflected in
> orthography (voice was normally not marked in runic
> writing)?? And if
> there were new instances of /z/ (Brondum-Nielsen,
> Gammeldansk
> Grammatik argues that occasional <z> spellings in
> later manuscripts
> could reflect voiced /s/), what happened to these?
> I hope any of you know the solution to my problem.
> Thanks in advance.
>
> yours, Lily
>
>

Lily, I must admit that I'm no expert on the subject.
In fact, I'm far from it. However, the question seems
to verge on the question of why the Japanese never
incorporated the 'ch' sound into their
hiragana/katakana. I doubt there is a positive answer-
if I'm correct the speakers have been dead for quite
some time... My best guess, if there must be a reason,
would be that there was, it just wasn't written down.
If that makes any sense. Sorry I couldn't be of more
help.
-Emily

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