We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
A phonetic account of Anglian smoothing.
- Authors
Howell, Robert B.; Wicka, Katerina Somers
- Abstract
This ariticle presents a phonetically-grounded account of Anglian smoothing that seeks not only to establish the phonetic facts of this particular process, but also to place smoothing in the context of other early Old English sounds changes, notably breaking. As Hogg (1992) points out, the process of Anglian smoothing, a monophthongization in which ea > æ, eo > e and io > i when followed by k, g, x (with or without intervening liquid), has proven difficult for scholars to adequately explain in either theoretical or phonetic terms. A good deal of the difficulty surrounding the nature of this process results from a consideration of smoothing in conjunction with breaking. This issue is simply illustrated by the history of the Anglian word nēh "nigh." The reconstructed pre-OE form of this word is *nēh, which is then subject to breaking conditioned by the segment h, yielding * nēoh. Paradoxically, the diphthong undergoes smoothing to nēh, with the monophthongization ostensibly conditioned by reflexes of the same segment (h) that triggered the earlier diphthongization of breaking. Any account of smoothing has to deal with this apparent paradox
- Subjects
MONOPHTHONGIZATION; PHONETICS; VOWELS; OLD English language; ENGLISH language; CONSONANTS; DIALECTS
- Publication
Folia Linguistica, 2007, Vol 28, Issue 1/2, p187
- ISSN
0165-4004
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/FLIN.2007.187