|
Germanic Lexicon Project
Message Board
|
|
|
Author: Sean Crist
Email: kurisuto at panix dot com
Date: 2006-05-02 10:55:41
Subject: Re: The /u:/ to /aU/ Shift
> Okay, this is one thing that has bothered me for awhile now. When is
> it speculated that English and German made the shift from /u:/ to /aU/?
> Was this shift made independently from each language? If not,
> wouldn't this had to of happened before the migration to England
> or was there an already formed undercurrent in both languages leading
> to this trend?
This is a parallel innovation, not a shared one. There's plenty of evidence that this is the case.
Based on comparative reconstruction, it's clear that this vowel was a monophthong in Proto-Germanic. There are sound changes in Old English, such as Umlaut and Trisyllabic Shortening, whose effects on this vowel make perfect sense if the vowel was a monophthong at the time, and much less sense if the vowel was already a diphthong. The vowel alternations in pairs like profound/profundity are an example; both words used to contain a long monophthong /u:/, but the vowel got shortened in "profundity" before the diphthongization sound change occurred.
The orthography of Old English and the various Old High German dialects appears to represent the vowel as a monophthong.
Loan words from Old French undergo the diphthongization rule, since those words were borrowed before the /u:/ > [aw] sound change occurred.
Some dialects in the far north of England, such as Durham, never underwent the Great Vowel Shift, and among working class speakers, you can reportedly still hear the unshifted /u:/ to this day.
Parallel innovations do occur; they're not uncommon. This one is a textbook example.
--Sean
| Messages in this thread | Name | College/University | Date |
| The /u:/ to /aU/ Shift |
Victar Mas |
|
2006-05-01 15:51:18 |
| Re: The /u:/ to /aU/ Shift |
Sean Crist |
|
2006-05-02 10:55:41 |