From: Emily na
Message: 3975
Date: 2004-01-05
> Hello, I need your help.Lily, I must admit that I'm no expert on the subject.
> 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
>
>