Dynamics of the English Phonological System 9783110815573, 9789027923240

Table of contents :
PREFACE
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
I. PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON TONE FEATURES
A. The dynamics of timbre oppositions in the OE vowel system
1. The appearance of the opposition of timbre gliding in the subsystem of tense (long) vowel phonemes
2. The extension of the opposition of timbre gliding to the subsystem of lax (short) vowel phonemes by breaking
3. Palatalization and velar umlaut as additional sources of phonemes with timbre gliding
4. Palatal umlaut as a stage in the extension of the opposition of timbre gliding
5. The general rearrangement of timbre oppositions in Late OE
6. Summary
B. The rearrangement of the localization opposition in the OE consonant system
1. The split in the back consonants and its links with the rearrangements in timbre oppositions
II. PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES
A. The oppositions of tenseness (length) in OE vowels and consonants
1. The phonological interpretation of protensity features
2. The establishment of tenseness oppositions in OE vowels and consonants and the distributional properties of tense phonemes
3. Vowel lengthening before certain consonant clusters as the final stage in the extension of tenseness oppositions in OE
B. The rearrangement in the system of phonemic oppositions in Early ME
1. The replacement of the consonantal oppositions of tenseness and voice by the opposition of fused tenseness
2. The replacement of the opposition of vocalic tenseness by the new opposition of abruptness
C. The evolution of the opposition of vocalic abruptness in ME and MnE
1. The rearrangement in the ME system of vowel phonemes and in their distribution
2. Vocalization of certain consonants and the emergence of non-abrupt gliding phonemes
3. The Great Vowel Shift
4. The formation of the MnE vowel system
D. Summary
III. ON FUNCTIONAL FACTORS IN THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM
A. The construction of English phonetic words
1. The primaries
a. Onsets
b. Peaks
c. Codas
2. Relations between primaries
3. The constructional potential and its realization
B. Quantitative relations between the lexical and phonic tiers in the macrosystem of language
1. On the relationship between the constructional potential and its realization
2. A mathematical model for the realization of the constructional potential
C. The functional determination of the numerical composition of the phonological system as a factor in its dynamics
REFERENCES
INDEX OF NAMES
INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica, 155

THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

by

V.Y.PLOTKIN PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF KISHINEV

1972 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

Original title: OHZJIUÜCKOÜ $oHOAozmecKoü cucmeMW (Novosibirsk, Zapadno-Sibirskoe kniznoe izdatelstvo, 1967)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 78-190143

Printed in Hungary

PREFACE

This book was originally published in Russian (Dinamika angtijskoj fonologiceskoj sistemy [Novosibirsk, 1967]) as the text of my doctoral dissertation in English philology. It is not a manual of phonological history, but presumes in the reader an acquaintance with the major events in the history of English sounds. Its aim is not to describe the sound changes, but to discover the factors that caused them. In other words, the book is devoted to a causal explanation of the sound changes that took place in the history of the English language. The diachronic phonology of English is presented here as a dynamic process, the stages of which are linked as causes and consequences of one another. The functional factors of the process are also investigated. Being, to the best of my knowledge, the first attempt of this kind, the book is primarily an exposition of the author's views. The discussion of the literature on the subject does not claim to include all the views expressed before. The basic facts of the history of English sounds have been taken from the classical works by Sweet, Jespersen, Luick and Sievers; references to these works are made only occasionally. The investigation embraces all the major sound changes in the history of English, viz. palatal and velar umlaut, breaking, lengthening of vowels before consonant clusters, splitting of velar consonants, loss of gemination, voicing of fricatives, ME changes in vowel length, reduction of unstressed vowels, the Great Vowel Shift, vocalization of sonants and diphthongization in ME and MnE. But the arrangement of the book is not suited to a special treatment of individual sound changes or of chronological periods. The sound changes are grouped round changes in the system of phonemic oppositions and are regarded as manifestations of the latter. Apart from processes on the levels of phonemes and phonemic oppositions, changes in the phonetic structure of root morphemes are investigated. This enables us to introduce functional factors into phonological explanations. General problems of diachronic phonology are not discussed in the book unless they have a direct bearing on a specific subject. Of course, this does not stem from any lack of interest in those problems. My views on the theory and methods of diachronic phonology have been formed in the seminar on Germanic diachronic phono-

6

PREFACE

logy, which was convened by Professor M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij at the Philological Faculty of the Leningrad University in 1961, and has been functioning more or less regularly (the fifth session met in Moscow in November, 1969). I wish to express my gratitude to all my colleagues in the seminar, whose friendly and frank criticism enabled me to introduce many improvements into my work. V. Y. Plotkin Novosibirsk May, 1970

CONTENTS

PREFACE

5

ABBREVIATIONS

9

INTRODUCTION

11

I. PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON TONE FEATURES A. The dynamics of timbre oppositions in the OE vowel system 1. The appearance of the opposition of timbre gliding in the subsystem of tense (long) vowel phonemes 2. The extension of the opposition of timbre gliding to the subsystem of lax (short) vowel phonemes by breaking 3. Palatalization and velar umlaut as additional sources of phonemes with timbre gliding 4. Palatal umlaut as a stage in the extension of the opposition of timbre gliding 5. The general rearrangement of timbre oppositions in Late OE 6. Summary

17 17 17 18 22 23 28 33

B. The rearrangement of the localization opposition in the OE consonant system 34 1. The split in the back consonants and its links with the rearrangements in timbre oppositions 34 II. PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES ..

38

A. The oppositions of tenseness (length) in OE vowels and consonants ... 38 1. The phonological interpretation of protensity features 38 2. The establishment of tenseness oppositions in OE vowels and consonants and the distributional properties of tense phonemes 40 3. Vowel lengthening before certain consonant clusters as the final stage in the extension of tenseness oppositions in OE 44

8

CONTENTS

B. The rearrangement in the system of phonemic oppositions in Early ME 47 1. The replacement of the consonantal oppositions of tenseness and voice by the opposition of fused tenseness 47 2. The replacement of the opposition of vocalic tenseness by the new opposition of abruptness 53 C. The evolution of the opposition of vocalic abruptness in ME and MnE 56 1. The rearrangement in the ME system of vowel phonemes and in their distribution 2. Vocalization of certain consonants and the emergence of non-abrupt gliding phonemes 3. The Great Vowel Shift 4. The formation of the MnE vowel system D. Summary III. ON FUNCTIONAL FACTORS IN THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM A. The construction of English phonetic words 1. The primaries a. Onsets b. Peaks c. Codas 2. Relations between primaries 3. The constructional potential and its realization

56 61 63 66 72

74 74 74 75 77 77 79 80

B. Quantitative relations between the lexical and phonic tiers in the macrosystem of language 81 1. On the relationship between the constructional potential and its realization 81 2. A mathematical model for the realization of the constructional potential 84 C. The functional determination of the numerical composition of the phonological system as a factor in its dynamics 87 REFERENCES

90

INDEX OF NAMES

95

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

97

ABBREVIATIONS

ME MnE OE A T U R A:

Middle English Modern English Old English any monomoric vowel any noise consonant |i| or |u| |r|, |1|, |m| or |n| any bimoric vowel

INTRODUCTION

A.

The diachronic phonology of English as a separate branch of linguistic research is at most three decades old. Much has been achieved since its birth in the forties. All the major sound changes have been subjected to phonological scrutiny by a number of scholars, among whom we find B. Trnka and J. Vachek of Czechoslovakia, A. Martinet and J. Fourquet of France, H. Penzl, H. Kurath and E. H. Antonsen of the United States, A. I. Smirnitskij, I. P. Ivanova, Y. B. Krupatkin and A. S. Liberman of the Soviet Union, E. J. Dobson of Great Britain, W. Jassem of Poland and others. Phonological explanations for many sound changes have been suggested. Synchronic descriptions have been made for the phonological system of English at certain stages in its historic development, notably for the OE vowels (C. F. Hockett and R. P. Stockwell in the United States). The most important result of all this work is the practical refutation of the deeprooted view that regards phonetic history as the domain of numerous individual, disconnected and spontaneous processes, to which the very concept of causality is inapplicable. It has been made convincingly clear that the search for the causes of sound changes is fruitful and extremely significant for linguistics as a whole. At the same time we have learned much about the phonological history of English. But we cannot be satisfied with explanations concerning parts of the phonological system within narrow chronological limits. The time is ripe for a replacement of separate explanations for every particular sound change by a coherent explanation of the whole phonological history of the language. This cannot be achieved, however, by putting several investigations together under one title. A broadening of the scope of investigation involves a radical change in its aims, methods and results as compared with the investigation of individual sound changes. It is, indeed, difficult to expect a full explanation of a phonological process when it is studied alone. The very idea of separate explanations for individual sound changes is merely a continuation of the atomistic approach so typical of nineteenth century historical phonetics. The segmentation of phonological history into separate 'pro-

12

INTRODUCTION

cesses' is itself inherited from historical phonetics, which studied changes in consonants and in vowels, changes in long and short vowels etc., as separate events, thus classifying sound changes exactly as it classified sounds. True, some phoneticians did look for connections between sound changes divided in that way, though the objects they searched for were mystic 'tendencies'. K. Luick, who was greatly interested in organic links between sound changes, was able to unite all the OE vowel changes into one process and was the first to point out the contrasting development of Early MnE long and short vowels. Diachronie phonology has succeeded in demonstrating the unity of both palatal and velar umlaut, in connecting the fall of geminates with the voicing of fricatives, and in linking the Great Vowel Shift to the quantitative changes in ME vowels. Atomism is thus losing ground. But all the above-mentioned sound changes were chronologically close to one another and took place within the same phonological subsystem - i.e., in the vowels or in the consonants. Remote connections cannot be discovered without breaking through the barriers imposed by phonetic tradition. Autonomy in phonological solutions diverts our attention from the dynamics of the chief object of phonology in general and diachronic phonology in particular, viz. phonemic oppositions. Changes in the system of phonemic oppositions are much slower than in the phonemes themselves; they occupy periods much longer than just one or two centuries. Therefore the establishment and extension of new oppositions cannot be squeezed into the narrow chronological boundaries of investigations devoted to individual sound changes. The most we can hope to observe and explain in such investigations are changes in the system of phonemes. Whenever those changes presuppose changes among phonemic oppositions, the latter are just posited; the circumstances that caused them inevitably escape our attention. Finally, an isolated study of sound changes precludes a thorough analysis of functional factors in phonological dynamics. A change concerning one phoneme might be caused by the size of its functional load; a change might bring about a certain increase in homophony - a scholar analysing an individual sound change cannot go beyond the discovery of such functional influences. Of great significance in phonological dynamics is the functional description of the phonemic system as a whole, and this description is itself subject to change. But the global functional characteristic of the phonemic system and its role in phonological dynamics cannot be fruitfully discussed in a paper about one sound change. To sum up, phonological investigations of limited scope, perhaps fully justified and inevitable at the beginning of diachronic phonology, do not meet the requirements of the next stage, when large-scale dynamic processes are examined.

INTRODUCTION

13

B.

While approaching sound changes with the aim of describing them as links in a chain of causes and consequences, we must take into account the widespread scepticism concerning the fruitfulness of the search for causes of sound changes. We do not mean only those linguists who maintain that causes of change can never be discovered or that this is not the task of linguistics, as we search in vain for any sequence of historical events in which sound change can be shown to be the result of some other sort of change... the causes of sound change cannot be found within the system of habits we call language.1

Such views have been criticized by outstanding phonologists.2 There is also a less categorical kind of scepticism which does not deny the cognoscibility of causal relations in phonology, but doubts the feasibility of their discovery because our knowledge of past states and events is incomplete and therefore insufficient. It is maintained, for instance, that the notion of causality is justified only in. some favourable circumstances, particularly when the list of linguistic facts at our disposal is known to be exhaustive, while the emergence of the given fact is explained by the action of the smallest number of causes. Historical linguistics, however, mostly deals with situations when the scholar does not know all the facts and is therefore unable to determine the whole network of causal relations that brought about the fact under investigation.3

To begin with, there is a vicious circle there - before we decide to introduce the very notion of causality, we are to have a complete list of causes for the given historic fact. Moreover, the author of the quotation makes the causal approach towards historic events conditional upon the scholar's certainty of the completeness of the list of facts known to him; the result of the investigation is considered satisfactory only if all the causal relations have been discovered. But the only limit of any list of known facts is absolute omniscience. No science puts forward such extreme conditions for the acceptability of its theories; why should linguistics be an exception? It would be naive to expect any analysis of a sound change to result in an exhaustive description of its causes, rejecting in the meantime every explanation that falls short of this maximalistic ideal. 1

Charles F. Hockett, A course in modern linguistics (New York, 1959) pp. 388-89. Andrd Martinet, Economic des changements phonetiques: Tratte de phonologic diachronique (Berne, 1955) pp. 13-17; 33-36; M.I. Steblin-Kamenskij,"Dostupny li izuceniju priiinnyje svjazi v istorii jazyka?", Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1961, 8. 3 V. N. Toporov, Review of Ivan Lekov, "Nasoki v razvoja na fonologicnite sistemi na slavjanskite jezici", in Struktumo-tipologiceskije issledovanija (Moskva, 1962) p. 234. 2

14

INTRODUCTION

The worst policy in such matters is to decide from the start that, whatever we do, there will remain a terra incognita forever inaccessible to linguists at the very core of the domain which it is their duty to investigate.*

A. Martinet sees one of the reasons for such scepticism in a demand for precision or, rather, seeming precision: some linguists reject causal explanations, for they might prove to be incomplete and therefore not precise.5 But all knowledge is relative; since all sciences are quite content with the imperfect knowledge they derive from incomplete lists of facts, and no one suggests that they suspend investigations until the day when they can get all the facts they need and can discover all their causes, diachronic linguistics will do the same and study the causes for sound change. What really matters is not the absolute, but the relative completeness of facts at the scholar's disposal. In accordance with the degree of completeness we must vary the methods of studying causal relations and the assessment of the results. Documented and reconstructed periods in the history of a language should be distinguished in this respect. At the present stage in the development of diachronic phonology the study of the former must be given priority; reconstruction of phonological data remains the first task for the history of languages not fixed in writing (cf. Martinet, 1955,15-16). Prehistorical, i.e. reconstructed changes cannot be treated in the same manner as historically attested changes... The problems of reconstruction should not be prematurely linked and added to the specific problems of diachronic phonemics.6

One of the most important tasks of diachronic phonology is the study of the dynamics of phonological systems documented in writing at long periods. We must investigate more fully the subtypes of changes that have been documented. Their mechanism, widely studied in the 19th century, must be dealt with in the context of phonological systems and can then be outlined with greater precision.7

Speaking of the history of English, we can regard as documented not only the time since the 7th century, but also the pre-English period for which there is documented evidence from older Germanic writing - Gothic and runic. Altogether we can deal with almost two thousand years of documented phonetic history. Those are the chronological boundaries of the present book. Problems of earlier history are raised only occasionally. 1 Andre Martinet, Review of Anton Sicherer, Lautwandel und seine Triebkräfte, in Language, XXXVIII. 3 (1962): 284. 5 Andro Martinet, "Les problemes de la phonetique evolutive", in Proceedings of the 5th International congress of phonetic sciences in Münster (Basel, New York, 1965): 88. 6 Herbert Penzl, "The evidence for phonemic changes", in Studies presented to Joshua Whatmough (VGravenhage, 1957) p. 193. 7 Winfred P. Lehmann, "Types of sound change", in Proceedings of the 9th international congress of linguists in Cambridge, Mass., (The Hague, 1964) pp. 661-62.

INTRODUCTION

15

C.

In the methods of diachronic phonology the most controversial problem concerns the admissibility of taking into account various aspects of a sound change. Is it correct, for instance, to use diachronic evidence in a synchronic description of, say, the OE vowels? Are functional considerations relevant to the description of a structural change? The theory of sound change rests on a limited, fragmentary factual foundation at present. Hence the widespread inclination to develop the theory of diachronic phonology on a deductive basis, bringing into it many theses of structural phonology which has emerged and developed as synchronic by definition. Both branches of phonology - synchronic and diachronic - must no doubt be built on one theoretical basis. But it is wrong to assume that the theory can be created for synchronic phonology and then transplanted on diachronic phonology. If anything, the reverse is true. The same object - the phonological system - is treated by one of the branches in its simplified, reduced static aspect, by the other - in the fuller and more complex dynamic aspect.8 General phonological theory should therefore be dynamic, whereas synchronic phonology is to be regarded as a specific case of a system with zero dynamics. A simplified system with the dynamic aspect taken away naturally needs a simpler description. If reduction is inherent in a system, the corresponding simplification in the description does not affect its adequacy. But when the reduction is artificial, resulting from certain aspects of the system being ignored, the simplified description is obviously less adequate. These considerations determine our answers to the questions above. No doubt the scholar has the right to disregard any aspect of the object of his investigation which he considers irrelevant. What is questioned is not the right, but the expedience of doing so. The diachronic phonologist must remember that certain aspects of phonological systems - e.g., the phonic realization of phonemes and oppositions are completely or partially inaccessible to him. The value of the information about the remaining aspects of the system rises accordingly. In such circumstances a refusal to take into consideration any known fact cannot be justified, whatever aspect of the system studied it may help to elucidate. Indeed, limiting the list of facts taken into consideration is tantamount to an artificial reduction of the system with the aim of simplifying its description. Reduction of this kind has proved useful in synchronic descriptions of living languages, and its theoretical foundations belong to the great achievements of structural linguistics. However, diachronic phonology puts adequacy before simplification in phonological descriptions. The methods of synchronic analysis worked out by structural linguistics imply disregard of many facts presumed to lie outside phonology or outside synchrony. 8

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "K teorii zvukovyh izmenenij", Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 1966, 2: 68.

16

INTRODUCTION

The result is a considerable gain in the simplicity of description, which is certainly an advantage from many viewpoints. But we lose in adequacy. Reducing the range of facts to be considered inevitably leads to the emergence of a number of variants of description for the same system. The non-uniqueness of phonological descriptions for one system is a direct result of simplification. By disregarding one aspect we get one simplified variant of the description; disregarding another we naturally produce another variant. "The so called non-uniqueness of phonological solutions is an illusion. They are non-unique in so far as they are solutions of different conditions."9 A multitude of descriptions for one synchronic state cannot satisfy diachronic phonology. II est des cas ou il peut etre preferable de ne pas presenter diverses formulations synchroniques pour chacun des stades evolutifs qu'on pourrait vouloir caracteriser. En effet, donner differentes formulations, c'est souvent dissocier certains aspects d'un phonomene qu'on ne comprend bien que si on le saisit dans son ensemble et dans son devenir.10

Thus diachronic phonology requires adequacy in synchronic descriptions and, consequently, does not favour simplified and non-unique descriptions. Of course, reduction and simplification are quite often forced upon descriptions of phonological system in remote historic epochs; the scholar cannot help disregarding data he does not possess. Hence the well-known non-uniqueness of diachronic descriptions and explanations. But as a matter of principle diachronic phonology must be prepared to use any material available, to disregard no aspect of the system under investigation a priori.11 The study of phonological dynamics presupposes the co-operation of the two branches of phonology in the solution of diachronic problems; that implies, among other things, the use of diachronic data in synchronic descriptions. The search for causes of sound changes is not helped by attempts to determine in advance the hierarchy of factors - structural or functional, phonological or phonic, to single out one of them as the decisive factor. Premature postulates can only narrow the diachronic phonologist's field of vision. Everything that can throw at least a little light on the dynamics of phonological systems must be thoroughly analysed without prejudice. Well-founded solutions of the mechanism of phonological dynamics in general will be produced only by an unbiased investigation of the dynamics of many different phonological systems. "The path to a richer and more firmly established diachronic linguistic methodology lies first of all through a large number of concrete investigations. "ia 9 M.I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "O simmetrii v fonologiceskih reSenijah i ih nejedinstvennosti", Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1964, 2: 51; and Ocerki po diahroniceskoj fonologii skandinavskih jazykov. (Leningrad, 1966) p. 65. 10 Andro Martinet, "Indetermination phonologique et diachronie", Phonetica, XII. 1 (1965): 14. 11 Y. B. Krupatkin, "A synchronic problem diachronically solved: the pre-English nazalized vowels", Philologica Pragensia, VIII. 2-3, Miscellanea Trnka, (1965): 254; and Stanovlenije drevneanglijskogo vokalizma: Problema ingveonskogo razvitija, Avtoreferat dissertacii (Leningradskij Universitet, 1966) pp. 17-18. 12 Y. B. Krupatkin, "Towards a causal internal reconstruction", Philologica Pragensia, IX. 4 (1966): 417.

PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON TONE FEATURES

A. THE DYNAMICS OF TIMBRE OPPOSITIONS IN THE OE VOWEL SYSTEM

The first problem of English diachronic phonology is the formation of the OE vowel system. In place of a relatively poor vowel system found in Germanic, presumably consisting of ten phonemes at most (five long ones and five short ones), OE had a much richer vocalism. It also comprised two subsystems of long and short vowels, but each was at least twice as rich as it had been in Germanic. The origin of the new phonemes is well known: most were products of several combinatory sound changes that took place two or three centuries before the beginning of OE writing. Even before those changes the vowel system incorporated the descendants of the Germanic diphthongs, which must have had their share in the rearrangement of the vowel system. The biphonemic Germanic diphthongs were included into the subsystem of long vowels. In the process the latter was enriched not only by new phonemes, but - what is more important - by a new phonemic opposition. L The appearance of the opposition of timbre gliding in the subsystem offense (long) vowel phonemes The Germanic biphonemic diphthongs ai au eu all became monophonemic in OE. While the diphthongs with the front glide / turned into monophthongs (ei =- i: ai > a:), the diphthongs with the back glide u (au eu and also iu in the dialects where it was kept apart from eu) did not follow suit. Their transition into monophonemes was not accompanied by the loss of gliding, and in OE they appeared as monophonemic diphthongoids (sa· eo: iu:). The contraction of the Germanic diphthongs itself is beyond the scope of the present investigation. What we are interested in are its results in the OE vowel system, above all the place taken by the new phonemes in the system. Two facts are significant here. First, the new phonemes were included into the phonemic opposition of raising according to the raising of their initial parts.1 1 Jean Fourquet, "Le Systeme des eloments vocaliques longs en vieil-anglais: considerations 'strucfurales'", in Melanges Fernand Masse (Paris, 1959) p. 153.

18

TONE FEATURES

Secondly, they did not form a third subsystem, but joined the long vowels.2 It remains to see how the new phonemes were integrated into the timbre opposition. On their appearance each raising accommodated three long vowel phonemes - /i: iu: u:/, /e: eo: o:/, /ae: aea a·/ (Krupatkin, 1966a, 5). The new phonemes were distinguished from the old monophthongs by the instability of their gliding articulation, which shifted from one timbre (front spread) to the other (back round). The possibility for vowels to utilize gliding as a phonemic distinctive feature is well known.3 But mostly gliding is found from one raising to another, i.e., in the vertical plane. Gliding in the horizontal plane, or timbre gliding is regarded as a theoretical possibility rather than a realizable distinctive feature, presenting too subtle a distinction (Merlingen, 1960: 141). The very fact that timbre gliding is a linguistic rarity has been used as an argument against attributing it to OE vowels.* However, the theoretical inadmissibility and practical impossibility of timbre gliding as a phonemic distinctive feature are by no means self-evident. Historic facts bear out timbre gliding in OE vowels.5 The contraction of the Germanic biphonemic «-diphthongs thus brought about an important innovation in the system of phonemic oppositions. Beside the existing timbre opposition of front spread vs. back round vowels (as we shall see later, it was one opposition) a new opposition came into being, that of timbre gliding, distinguishing the new front-to-back diphthongoids /iu: eo: aea/ from the long monophthongs. 2. The extension of the opposition of timbre gliding to the subsystem of lax (short) vowel phonemes by breaking After the entry of the reflexes of the Germanic w-diphthongs into the subsystem of long vowels the latter became richer than the subsystem of short vowels, which did not contain gliding phonemes and, unlike its counterpart, could not develop them from diphthongs. Short diphthongoids with front-to-back gliding, different from the reflexes of the Germanic w-diphthongs only in length, are known to have appeared in OE as a result of breaking. But short diphthongoids of this kind seem even more exotic than their long counterparts, for a noticeable movement of articulation is hard to achieve within 2 A. I. Smirnitskij, "Voprosy fonologii v istorii anglijskogo jazyka", Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1964, 2: 82; and Fourquet, 1959, 159. 3 Josef Vachek, "Über die phonologische Interpretation der Diphthonge mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Englischen", Prague Studies in English, IV (1933): 122; and Kemp Malone, "Diphthong and glide", in Melanges Fernand Masse (Paris, 1959) pp. 256-57; and Weriand Merlingen, "Über Ein- und Zweiphonemigkeit", Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, XIII. 2(1960): 140 ff. 1 Robert P. Stockwell and C. Westbrook Barritt, "The Old English short digraphs: some observations", Language, XXXI. 3 (1955). 6 Sherman M. Kühn and Randolph Quirk, "Some recent interpretations of OE digraph .spellings", language XXIX. 2 (1953).

TONE FEATURES

19

a shorter duration. Then, the short diphthongoids, unlike the long ones, had no diphthongal ancestors. Therefore gliding in OE short vowels is often denied. But there is sufficient evidence to prove its existence. After all, it is not as unusual as one might be led to think. At least one modern Germanic language - Icelandic - uses gliding as a distinctive feature both in long and short vowels.6 The OE short front-to-back diphthongoids /iu eo asa/ originated from allophones of short front vowels before the so-called breaking consonants /r l x/. The phonological mechanism of breaking has been elucidated by Y. B. Krupatkin.7 The phonemicization of the 'broken' allophones of front vowels /i e ae/ was caused by a paradigmatic factor: the presence of diphthongoids in the subsystem of long vowels created 'holes in the pattern', or "cases vides" (Martinet 1955, 80) in the subsystem of short vowels, whereas otherwise the two subsystems were quite parallel. The parallelism, destroyed by the emergence of long gliding vowels, was fully restored by breaking. In other words, the phonemic opposition of timbre gliding, which first appeared in the long vowels, was extended to the short vowels. Structural factors thus explain the origin of OE breaking. Of considerable interest is the co-operation of structural (paradigmatic), functional and syntagmatic factors, each of which played a part in OE breaking. The functional approach seems to be fruitless in explaining OE breaking as an individual sound change. It is well known that the new phonemes created by breaking had an infinitesimal functional load, because their distribution remained practically the same as that of their allophonic ancestors. It could not be increased, as breaking did not involve the loss of the context which had caused the allophonic variation. But the functional load of individual phonemes is of little importance in comparison with the functional load of the phonemic system as a whole and of its phonemic oppositions. The decisive factor was the functional load of the opposition of timbre gliding. The long front-to-back diphthongoids undoubtedly had a large functional load. But timbre gliding as a phonemic opposition could not be confined to long vowels alone: it had to spread to the short vowels if it was to survive in the system. It has been found that a strong influence on the subsystem of short vowels is characteristic of the OE long vowels; the split of short /a/ into /a/ and /ae/ is attributed to this influence.8 Is the demand for structural parallelism between the two vocalic subsystems so imperative that it can lead to the emergence of new vowel phonemes with practically no functional load? In modern West Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) we find seven short vowels at most, whereas the number of long vowels in them is above ten. The explanation lies in the nature of the opposition dividing the two subsystems. In the three languages named this is the opposition, whose marked 6 M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "The vowel system of Modern Icelandic", Studio linguistica, XIV. 1. (1960): 42; and Steblin-Kamenskij, 1966b, 60. 7 Y. B. Krupatkin, "K istorii drevneanglijskoj sistemy glasnyh", Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1962, 6: 57-59; and Krupatkin, 1966a, 24-27. 8 Y. B. Krupatkin, "Byla li anglo-frizskaja palatalizacija kratkogo a 'spontannym' izmenenijem ?", Filologiceskije nauki, 1962, 1: 199-200; Krupatkin, 1962b, 59-60.

20

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members are the checked (short) vowels.9 In OE the marked members were the long (tense) vowels. The number of marked phonemes can be smaller than that of their unmarked counterparts, as in modern West Germanic languages; both numbers can be equal, as in modern Scandinavian languages; but the marked phonemes cannot be more numerous than the unmarked ones.10 Consequently, the emergence of new marked (long or tense) vowels with timbre gliding in OE necessitated the creation of corresponding unmarked (short or lax) vowel phonemes. As was earlier the case with /ae/, the 'holes in the pattern' for /aea eo iu/ were eventually filled by splitting one phoneme (or rather its dispersion field, "champ de dispersion" - Martinet 1955, 47) into two. Certain allophones of the phoneme to be split constitute a new phoneme, entering into a phonemic opposition with the remaining allophones of the parental phoneme. It is naturally regarded as a precondition for such a rearrangement that the parental phoneme should possess suitable allophones, whose articulation could materialize the opposition in question. Thus /a/ before splitting certainly had a front allophone fs]. Did the OE front vowels /i e ae/ possess allophones with backward gliding in the positions for breaking? In reconstructing ancient phonological systems linguists sometimes go beyond establishing the phoneme inventories and list the allophones of individual phonemes. Is the listing of allophones really possible or necessary? Yes - if it aims at demonstrating the range of allophonic variation, which is itself determined by the phonemic system. No - if the aim is an exhaustive list of allophones, because "every phoneme has an infinite number of allophones".11 Whatever the dimensions of a dispersion field, it is always a continuum, not a multitude of distinct points of articulation. Elaborate arguments are used by scholars to prove, for instance, that Proto-Germanic vowels had allophones later phonemicized in umlauts.12 There is no need to prove this, for in the dispersion field of any phoneme some allophones will inevitably be more front or back, more open or narrow, more stable or unstable, more labialized or palatalized than the other allophones of the same phoneme. The existence of gliding allophones in the dispersion fields of the short front vowels in OE before breaking, therefore, does not have to be proved. There is also the problem of explaining the strong action of the breaking consonants /r l x/ upon the preceding vowels. However, relative, not absolute strength of action is sufficient for the separation of certain allophones into a new phoneme. Those allophones will be phonemicized in whose articulations the new distinctive feature (backward gliding in the case of breaking) is manifested more strongly than in the other 9 N. S. Trubetzkoy, Grundzüge der Phänologie (= Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, VII) (1939) p. 196. 10 Joseph H. Greenberg, "Synchronic and diachronic universals in phonology", Language, XLII. 2 (1966): 513. 11 Kemp Malone, "The phonemes of current English", in his Studies in heroic legend and in current speech (Copenhagen 1959) p. 227. 12 Elmer H. Antonsen, "On defining stages in prehistoric Germanic", Language, XLI. 1 (1965): 24-27.

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allophones of the same phoneme. In other words, VERY strong gliding was not necessary for the creation of the new phonemes; comparatively stronger gliding was quite sufficient. As for /r l x/, they are known to move the articulation of the preceding vowel back and down in various languages. The closer the consonant is to vowels on the paradigmatic plane, the greater its assimilative influence on vowels on the syntagmatic plane (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939a, 210-211). The breaking consonants were isolated in the consonantism,13 which evidently brought them closer to vowels paradigmatically. This can explain the strength of their influence on the vowels in breaking. It is of interest that the phonetic properties of the breaking consonants are utilized in phonological systems selectively, depending on the needs of the system. Thus in OE breaking only their ability to move the vowels back was utilized and only with regard to short front vowels; their ability to produce downward gliding was ignored. In contrast, Gothic breaking made use of the ability of /r x/ to broaden the articulation of the preceding vowels, but only with regard to short narrow vowels. There is no need to conclude that the breaking consonants of OE and Gothic had different articulations and different assimilative influences on vowels from the phonetic viewpoint; the difference in the directions of breaking can be explained by structural factors. We can sum up by stating that the dispersion field of a phoneme can always be divided by a phonemic boundary determined by the rearrangement of the phonological system. Phonetic substance is so rich and varied that it is able to provide the material basis for changes in many directions. Structural considerations determine not only the distinctive feature which breaks up the dispersion fields of the parental phonemes, but also the relative size of the two resulting fields. On the one hand, OE /a/ split in such a way that the new phoneme /ae/ was more frequent than new /a/ - this led many scholars to the conclusion that every Germanic /a/ =- /ae/ in pre-OE (for a critique of this view cf. Krupatkin 1962b: 56-57). On the other hand, the phonemes /iu eo aea/ were never frequent; the split obviously did not provide the new phonemes with sizable dispersion fields and functional loads. The explanation can be found in the nature of timbre oppositions. The markings in them are usually backness and/or rounding. Breaking was therefore a shift towards greater marking and could take place only in specific favourable circumstances, without which the vowel naturally remained unmarked, i.e., unbroken. In the case of /a/ and /ae/ there was a distribution of the allophones of Germanic /a/, which was neutral to timbre, between two members of the timbre opposition. Quite naturally, only those allophones got into the dispersion field of the back vowel /a/ whose environment enabled them to acquire the marked feature of backness, whereas all the others went to the unmarked front vowel /ae/ (Krupatkin, 1966a, 21).

13 Y. B. Krupatkin, "Old English breaking: a step to a phonemic approach", Philologica Pragensia VII. 1 (1964): 63.

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3. Palatalization and velar umlaut as additional sources of phonemes with timbre gliding

The front-to-back diphthongoids tended to increase their frequency by drawing gliding allophones, conditioned by other assimilative processes, into their dispersion fields. If we accept the widespread view that the digraphs io, eo, ea after the letters c, g represented diphthongal pronunciations, it follows that the front-to-back diphthongoids /iu eo aea/ also emerged in palatalizing positions. These are the position after the consonants /k j/ for front vowels and the position after /sk/ for all vowels. The existence of gliding allophones with a fronted onset which were subsequently phonemicized as front-to-back diphthongoids is quite understandable after /j/. After /k/, however, the front glide is not so easy to explain, for the back formation of the consonant is unfavourable, to say the least, for the fronting of the following vowel. It could perhaps be explained in the following way. Germanic is known to have distinguished two velar consonants - /k/ and labiovelar u /k /, the opposition between which was neutralized everywhere except before nonlabialized vowels. It is natural to presume that in the position of maximal distinction, i.e., before front vowels, the two consonants were kept wide apart in articulation. This could result in non-labiovelar /k/ being strongly palatalized; phonetically the distinction could be described as fkue kui] vs. ik'e k'i]. In Gothic /ku/ was perhaps still a separate phoneme. But in OE it was syntagmatically split into the biphonemic cluster /kw/ analogous to the initial clusters /tw dw sw 6w/. The transformation of the labial component of /ku/ into the phoneme /w/ could have led to a similar transformation in fk1] =- /kj/. But /kj/, unlike /kw/, could not be treated as an initial cluster, because it had no analogy among them. A resegmentation can be presumed: the palatal sound after /k/ could be interpreted as part of the following vowel, which thus acquired a front glide at its beginning. Finally the resulting short gliding vowels merged with the products of breaking. Palatalization, unlike breaking, affected the long vowels as well, increasing the functional load of the long diphthongoids. Two new diphthongoids /ie ie/ were also created, which could not join the front-to-back diphthongoids because gliding in the former was different in direction from timbre gliding (Fourquet, 1959, 151). The distribution of the short front-to-back diphthongoids was later increased due to velar umlaut - their dispersion fields attracted the gliding allophones of front vowels conditioned by the assimilative influence of the following back vowels. Breaking together with subsequent palatalization and velar umlaut can thus be described as the sources of OE short front-to-back diphthongoids. All the three sound changes were assimilative and were not accompanied by the loss of the conditioning environments. While increasing the distribution of the new phonemes, they could not therefore free them from positional limitations. The distribution of the short diphthongoids remained almost complementary to that of the short front vowels. Minimal pairs could appear only through irregular sound changes like the

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metathesis of /r/ in xrn 'house' contrasted to earn 'eagle' or the loss of gemination in final position in weal 'wall' contrasted to wxl 'battle' (Kühn and Quirk 1953: 154-155). The fact that the short front-to-back diphthongoids never had a considerable functional load was no doubt an important factor in their eventual disappearance from the English vowel system. But in Early OE their emergence was a significant step in the development of the phonemic opposition of timbre gliding in accordance with the structural and functional requirements of the phonological system. 4. Palatal umlaui as a stage in the extension of the opposition of timbre gliding Palatal or i-umlaut is treated in phonology as compensatory phonemicization of the front allophones of labialized vowels after the loss of the conditioning front vowel in the following unstressed syllable. What is there to be clarified then about /-umlaut? The attention of the scholars who have given z-umlaut phonemic treatment has always centred on the system of phonemes rather than on the phonemic oppositions that functioned in the system before and after the process. Therefore little is known about the dynamics of the oppositions. The thesis that "nicht die Phoneme, sondern die Oppositionen den eigentlichen Gegenstand der phonologischen Betrachtung bilden" (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 238) is fully valid for diachronic phonology. Nevertheless, systems of phonemic oppositions do not always attract due attention, though in theory the distinctive feature, not the phoneme is considered as the basic unit of phonological processes.14 We often hear, for instance, that certain allophones are phonemicized as a result of a certain process and a certain opposition appears in consequence. The principal actors in the drama of diachronic phonology are then the phonemes and their allophones: the former are born and die, interact, attracting or ousting one another, exchange allophones and so on, while the latter provide the material setting, the presence or absence of which can decide the issue of phonemic interaction. As for phonemic oppositions, their appearance or disappearance is thus presented as the effect of phonemic changes. There is reason to maintain, nevertheless, that the destiny of phonemic oppositions is not determined by the existence of certain phonemes - on the contrary, the birth and death of phonemes are determined by the dynamics of the system of oppositions. Phonemic oppositions constitute a SYSTEM, not just an inventory. If this is so, we must not begin the analysis of a sound change with the question about the availability of certain allophones in the phonemes affected by the change - it has been shown that allophonic conditions can be found for a variety of changes in the same phoneme (see pp. 20-21). We must begin by establishing the system of phonemic oppositions, finding out what oppositions made it up, how they interacted with one another, what 14 Martinet, 1955,77-78; andM. M. Guchman, "Sootnosenije fonologii i fonetiki v sravnitelnoistoriceskih issledovanijah", in Voprosy germanskogo jazykoznanija (Moskva, Leningrad, 1961) pp. 110-12; Steblin-Kamenskij, 1966a, 72-73.

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was their functional load and phonic basis. We must never forget that a change in the system of phonemic oppositions is an event of tremendous significance. The preconditions of such a change should be studied with utmost attention, as well as its immediate and remote effects on the phonology of the language. OE vowels undoubtedly participated in the phonemic oppositions of raising, tenseness (length) and timbre. The two former oppositions were diachronically stable: throughout the Old English period there were three degrees of raising and two degrees of length. The only part they played in phonemic processes was providing 'holes in the pattern' at their intersections with the third opposition of timbre. It was the latter opposition, however, which was primarily responsible for the emergence of the 'holes': they were created by the new opposition of timbre gliding which can.be regarded as an extension of the opposition of timbre. An investigation of the timbre opposition (or oppositions) is therefore crucial for the study of the OE vocalism. It is almost unanimously accepted at present that the only timbre opposition in Germanic languages before the umlauts was the opposition of labialization, whereas tongue-position (fronting or backness) became relevant only in the process itself.15 The decisive argument is that /-umlaut phonemicized the fronted allophones of /u/ and /o/; since these vowels varied in tongue-position and preserved their lip-rounding, only the latter can be described as phonemically relevant, the former being a redundant feature. But, logical as the argument might seem, it must be rejected as completely untenable. The utilization of lip-position alone without tongue-position as a phonemic distinctive feature is certainly possible (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 89-90). But it is usually connected with certain peculiarities in the phonemic system, especially with the system of consonantal oppositions. For instance, the use of labialization as the only timbre opposition of Russian vowels is linked to the use of palatalization as a consonantal distinctive feature (Martinet, 1955,119). In Germanic we seenothing that could have favoured such a limitation in the use of the primary timbre feature of tongue-position and its replacement by the secondary timbre feature of lip-position. It is true that this consideration does not refute Twaddell's thesis, but it calls for a reassessment of the problem. In quadrangular vowel systems with two timbre classes the nature of the timbre opposition is manifested by the distinction between the low vowel phonemes (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 89-90). There are three possibilities: (a) the low vowels are nonlabialized /ae/ and /a/ - then tongue-position alone is phonemically distinctive; (b) both vowels are non-front /a/ and /o/ - then lip-position alone is distinctive; (c) the two low vowels are front spread /ae/ and back round /a/, and then there is a fusion of the two features into one timbre opposition of optimal acute vs. optimal grave vowel phonemes.16 15

W. F. Twaddell, "The prehistoric Germanic short syllables", Language, XXIV. 2 (1948): 149. R. Jakobson, C. G. M. Fant and Morris Ha.\\e,'Preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their correlates, 3rd printing (Cambridge, Mass., 1955) p. 33. 16

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As OE obviously had the front vowel /as/, the second possibility, i.e., labialization as the only distinctive feature, is out of the question according to Trubetzkoy. The timbre opposition is either that of tongue-position alone or the fusion of tongue-andlip-position. The ultimate choice depends on the phonetic quality of the marked member of the timbre opposition, i.e., the phoneme /a/. It is believed that OE /a/ and /a/ were labialized to a certain extent.17 Then we have Trubetzkoy's third possibility. But the strongest objection to Twaddell's thesis about lip-position alone as the timbre opposition before umlaut is that umlaut would have been impossible if it were correct. Indeed, if tongue-position was irrelevant, then the vowel /' that caused umlaut was not a front vowel phonemically - it was only non-labialized. Such a vowel, naturally, could not have conditioned the fronting of the preceding vowel - if anything, it could only weaken the lip-rounding of the latter. In other words, before umlaut no assimilation could have taken place between the two vowels affecting their tongue-position if it was irrelevant to both. We come to the only possible conclusion: Germanic vowels before umlaut had the timbre opposition of front spread vs. back round. After z-umlaut this opposition is believed to have split into two according to tongue-position (front vs. back) and lip-position (round vs. spread). How did it affect the whole system of vowel oppositions ? What place could be assigned to the new oppositions in the system? We must not ignore the fact that just before umlaut the timbre opposition (still fused) developed a related opposition of timbre gliding. Together the two timbre oppositions produced three-member bundles of phonemes: /—u

e— ο

χ —χ

m

eo

sex

A pair of related binary oppositions can produce a bundle not only of three, but also of four phonemes. We may therefore say that the potential of the system was not exhausted after the new front-to-back diphthongoids came into being. An increase in the number of phonemic oppositions by splitting one of them into two was unnecessary in these circumstances. It was much more expedient to fill all the 'holes in the pattern' created by the intersection of the two related oppositions - timbre and timbre gliding. Since the three-member bundles contained two monophthongs and only one diphthongoid, another diphthongoid could be created in each of the bundles. It was to oppose the existing diphthongoid in timbre. But the front-to-back diphthongoids had both timbres. The only way for the prospective new diphthongoids to oppose the existing ones in timbre was to have the same timbres in reversed sequence, 17 Y. B. Krupatkin, "The Anglo-Frisian development of Germanic e^", Philologica Pragensia, IV. 3 (1961): 146.

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gliding from back to front articulation. Both sets of diphthongoids would then be opposite in timbre at all stages of their articulation. In other words, timbre opposition between diphthongoids with timbre gliding can be realized only as opposition in the direction of gliding. Back-to-front diphthongoids - something like /ui oe/ - could be created in OE as counterparts to front-to-back diphthongoids /iu eo/. The three-member bundles would then be replaced by four-member ones:

m — ui

eo—oe

The OE vowel system after /-umlaut indeed had four timbre classes. They are traditionally assumed to have been: (a) front spread /i e £e/; (b) front round (?) /y 0/; (c) front-to-back diphthongoids (?) /iu eo £ea/; (d) back round /u ο α/. But the phonetic and phonemic nature of the two 'inner' classes is still controversial. In the fifties there was a lively debate about the third class (i.e., [c]) represented in OE spelling by the digraphs io, eo, ea (see Language, volumes 29, 31, 35, 37). Contrary to the traditional assumption, the digraphs were declared to have represented back spread monophthongs. This obviously made the four classes fully symmetrical : two front vs. two back classes, two spread vs. two round classes. C. F. Hockett produced an interesting interpretation of the OE spelling system. He demonstrated quite convincingly that the scribes had symmetrical symbols for the vowels of the two 'inner' classes. Assuming the digraph oe and its ligature a to have stood for a front round vowel, he suggested that the same letters reversed had denoted the contrasting back spread vowel. C. F. Hockett further showed that OE y was not a letter, but a ligature of u and j exactly analogous to a = o+e.18 The first letter in OE digraphs and ligatures, according to C. F. Hockett, showed lip position: u, o for round, i, e for spread; the second letter showed the position of the tongue: /, e for front, o, a for back. The symmetry of both the vowel system of OE and its graphic representation, for which C. F. Hockett has found convincing evidence, can no longer be disputed. And yet his treatment of the two 'inner' vowel classes of OE is not the only possible treatment, to say the least. It is not a matter of correcting minor points. The phonemic nature of the two classes must be reinvestigated. In constructing his scheme C. F. Hockett clearly aimed at a symmetrical arrangement of the OE vowel system. The existence of diphthongoid vowels seemed incompatible with symmetry, as they had no parallel in the system; on the other hand, there was no parallel to the front round vowels /y0/. By treating the OE digraphs io, eo, ea as representations of back spread vowels C. F. Hockett eliminated one class that defied symmetry, and at the same time created a parallel to the other class. The phonet18

Charles F. Hockett, "The stressed syllables of Old English", Language, XXXV. 4 (1959); 593 ff.

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ic nature of the vowels concerned did not interest him; it does not matter "whether they were monophthongal or diphthongal in an absolute phonetic sense (whatever that may mean)" (Hockett, 1959b: 576). Diachronie evidence is likewise rejected. It is not hard to see, however, that Hockett's solution was predetermined by the factual premises he had accepted a priori. If the second timbre class - the vowels spelt y, a - was front round beyond doubt, symmetry can be achieved only by declaring the third timbre class back spread. In other words, the nature of any unknown class in a four-class system is automatically deduced from the nature of the three remaining classes, which is assumed to be known. It is quite possible, however, to try a different arrangement of known and unknown classes. What will happen, for instance, if we stick to the traditional view that OE to, eo, ea represented front-to-back diphthongs and question the vowels denoted by y and ce ? On this premise the symmetrical solution will be to treat the latter vowels as backto-front diphthongoids. The solution is just as symmetrical as Hockett's; it also requires a reassessment of one of the two 'inner' classes. But only one solution can be historically true. It was shown above (see p. 25) that after breaking the OE vowel system had 'holes in the pattern' for back-to-front diphthongoids. There is historical evidence that /-umlaut was initially a change from back /u o/ to back-to-front gliding vowels, not directly to front round vowels. The composite rune for umlauted /u/ consisted of the runes for /u/ and /i/; in the oldest glosses umlauted /u/ and /o/ were sometimes symbolized by digraphs ui, oi.ig C. F. Hockett's fine analysis of OE digraphs, far from being rejected together with his solution, serves well as an argument for the solution discussed. Anglo-Saxon scribes really worked out an ingenious, symmetrical system of symbols for the 'inner' timbre classes, whose symmetry was no doubt perceived at least by some of them. C. F. Hockett suggests that the scribes were able to go behind the phonemic nature of the vowels in question and to discover their distinctive features, viz. tongue and lip position, which were accordingly given separate graphic representations. Such phonemic finesse, however, is obviously fantastic for the seventh or eighth centuries. The solution discussed here makes this extravagant claim unnecessary. The creators of the OE graphic system simply reflected in symmetrical digraphs and ligatures the observable gliding articulations: front to back in ίο, eo, ea, back to front in ui, y, oi, oe, /o:/ confirms the view that the loss of lip-rounding as a separate phonemic feature coincided with the restoration of a fused timbre opposition. 6. Summary A long chain of connected vowel changes in OE can thus be presented as one phonological process which affected timbre oppositions. The process occupied a lengthy period of about a thousand years, beginning about the third century and coming to its end in the twelfth. The process went through five stages: a. The appearance of the phonemic opposition of timbre gliding in the monophonemicization of Germanic w-diphthongs, which became long front-to-back diphthongoids - the third and fourth centuries. b. The extension of the phonemic opposition of timbre gliding to the short vowels and the appearance of short front-to-back diphthongoids by breaking, then palatalization and velar umlaut - from the fifth to the eighth centuries. c. The appearance of two classes of vowels with timbre gliding, mutually opposed by the direction of gliding, in /-umlaut - the sixth and seventh centuries. d. The elimination of the phonemic opposition of timbre gliding and the separation of tongue and lip position into two phonemic distinctive features - the ninth and tenth centuries. e. The elimination of the phonemic opposition of lip-rounding and the restoration of the fused timbre opposition which had existed before the process started - the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The first three stages taken together make up the period of extension, when timbre

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gliding increased its scope. By the eighth century this opposition reached the maximum of its extension. All the 'holes in the pattern' created by this opposition had been filled with gliding phonemes. But the fullest extension of the opposition of timbre gliding proved to be uneconomical for the whole phonemic system. Functional and structural factors working together brought about first a replacement of this opposition by another timbre opposition, which was then also eliminated from the system. The reduction in the subsystem of timbre oppositions which followed its extension occupied the two final stages of the process described.

B. THE REARRANGEMENT OF THE LOCALIZATION OPPOSITION IN THE OE CONSONANT SYSTEM

1. The split in the back consonants and its links with the rearrangements in timbre oppositions The most important phonemic change in the OE consonants was the split of the back consonants into two localization series - velar and palatal. Chronologically the split is closely connected with /-umlaut. It was traditionally presumed to have preceded the latter, because the new front vovels produced by /-umlaut, unlike the original front vowels, could not palatalize the neighbouring back consonant.23 In phonological terms this means that the umlauted front vowel phonemes appeared when the allophonic variation [k ~ k'] under the assimilative influence of the front vowel had already stopped, when the former combinatory allophones had become separate phonemes and no longer responded to changes in their vocalic context. But what caused this phonemicization ? The search for a phonological solution led to a reassessment of the traditional chronology. The view was expressed that before /-umlaut there had been only allophonic variation between velar [k] and palatal [k']; /-umlaut turned the allophones into phonemes by changing their vocalic context while their articulations were preserved.24 But the advantages of the new solution are illusive: the pre-phonological solution failed to explain why allophonic variation had stopped before /-umlaut, H. Penzl's solution fails to explain why it stopped during /-umlaut. The difficulty remains, it has only been shifted to another point in the process. Why did the mechanism which automatically regulated allophonic variation fail to react all of a sudden, when the new front vowel appeared beside the consonant? If the umlauted vowels were just as front as the older front vowels, both were to produce exactly the same allophonic variation in the consonant. 23

Karl Brunner, Die englische Sprache: Ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung, 2. Auflage, I (Tübingen, 1960) p. 77. 24 Herbert Penzl. "The phonemic split of Germanic k in Old English", Language, XXIII. 1 (1947): 34-42.

TONE FEATURES

35

The mechanism of allophonic variation is of course synchronic and is unable to distinguish phonemes only by their origin. Before a new solution is attempted, it is necessary to list the undisputed historic facts about the split. What phonemes in what positions were affected by it? Four consonant phonemes /k k: g g:/ took part in the split. Of these the first two /k k:/ and the last /g:/ were always stops, whereas /g/ was a stop or a fricative depending on position. Only the split in the stops will be discussed here. The phonemic split was no doubt preceded by a stage of allophonic variation between velar and palatal articulation. In initial position palatal allophones appeared before any front vowel. But only one of the back stops occurred in this position - /k/. In non-initial positions all the four stops were possible, but here palatal allophones could appear in the vicinity of /i/ alone. In initial position [i] was probably present between /k/ and any following front vowel (see p. 22). If that was so, then palatal allophones were always caused by neighbouring [i]. An attempt to determine the phonological mechanism of the split should begin with an analysis of what happened in non-initial position (cf. Smirnitskij, 1946: 87-88). Here it affected all the back stops; here its nature is clear enough - the phonemicization of the palatal allophones of the consonants was compensatory due to the loss of the conditioning unstressed /i/. The chronology of the split in non-initial position is also obvious - the reduction of unstressed /i/ took place in the sixth or seventh century, and the split must have been simultaneous with it. So was /-umlaut. The connection between the split of back consonants and /'-umlaut is not only chronological. Both sound changes were paradigmatic splits of root phonemes compensating the syntagmatic loss of the same suffixal phoneme /i/. Both changes were similar in direction: vowels and consonants of back formation underwent splits in which their fronted allophones were phonemicized. The consonantal split is then not a consequence of /-umlaut, but an analogue of the latter. Its conditions, nature and results resemble those of /-umlaut to such an extent that it deserves the name of consonantal umlaut. After the palatal allophones of /k/ had been phonemicized into the palatal stop /k'/ in non-initial positions, the dispersion field of the new phoneme also included the former palatal allophones of /k/ in initial position. This strengthened the new phoneme, bringing it into an important position, broadening its distribution and increasing its functional load. But such a regrouping of allophones between velar /k/ and palatal /k'/ could take place after their separation, i.e., after /-umlaut, which was simultaneous with the separation. As has been shown (see p. 27), /-umlaut produced back-to-front diphthongoids, not front vowels. Immediately after /-umlaut its products began their articulation as back vowels and quite naturally could not palatalize the preceding /k/. Later they did become front vowels, but by that time the regrouping of allophones between /k/ and /k'/ was over, the boundaries between their dispersion fields had consolidated, and the appearance of new front vowels after velar /k/ was possible.

36

TONE FEATURES

The dispersion field of palatal /k'/ also attracted allophones of /k/ fronted under the influence of preceding alveolar /s/.25 The latter in its turn was retracted, which resulted in the syntagmatic merger /s+k/ and the creation of the fricative palatal phoneme /§/. The creation of the new localization series of OE consonants, i.e., the palatal series, was a step in the development of the subsystem of localization oppositions. Their extension reached its culmination with the emergence of the fourth series. It is noteworthy that the only important sound change in the history of OE consonants was simultaneous with major rearrangements in the subsystem of vocalic timbre oppositions and affected the consonantal localization oppositions which are akin to timbre oppositions (Trubetzkoy 1939a, 84 and 86). No new localization opposition was created : the pair of two localization oppositions of tone and compactness which form localization series can produce, when fully utilized, a four-member bundle of consonants /p - 1 - k' - k/. The new palatal series included four phonemes - /k' g'f and the corresponding geminates. Of these only the first was not subject to significant positional limitations and therefore had a considerable functional load, the other three were rare. But the subsystem of localization oppositions was fully extended in order to support a functionally weak series. As has been shown with regard to timbre oppositions, maximal extension of phonemic opposition is not the most economical way of building phonemic systems. The OE consonant system had an opposition which was used to distinguish only one pair of phonemes - /s/ and /Θ/; it was the opposition of strident vs. mellow consonants. The split in the back consonants increased the range of this opposition. The new phonemes /k' g'/ began to oppose /k g/ not only as palatal vs. velar stops, but also as strident vs. mellow stops. Phonetically this meant that the former became affricates /k' > ts/, /g' > dz/. It was probably at that stage that /§/ became a phoneme. Then a bundle of phonemes was formed consisting of the optimal (strident) fricative /s/, the mellow stop /k/ and the strident stop /t§/ on the analogy of the existing bundle of the optimal (mellow) stop /t/, the strident fricative /s/ and the mellow fricative /Θ/ (cf. Jakobson, Fant, Halle, 1955, 25). Stops

|

s— Fricatives

Stops

t|

tS — k

jj ί

;§

Fricatives

The inclusion of the new phonemes into the opposition of strident vs. mellow served 25

Π5.

Marguerite Durand, "La palatalisation en anglais", in Melanges Fernand Masse (Paris, 1959) p.

TONE FEATURES

37

to integrate not only themselves, but also the older phoneme /Θ/ into the phonemic system. It is hardly a mere coincidence that the interdental consonants which disappeared in almost all the other Germanic languages have survived in English and even increased their distribution (cf. OE j''seder, m dor, MnE father, mother). On the other hand, the affricates /ts dz/ greatly increased their distribution and functional loads with the influx of French borrowings, whereas the Old French affricate /ts/ was not adopted by ME. It can be explained by the practical incompatibility of /Θ/ and /ts/ in one language: bundles of phonemes created by the oppositions of stops vs. fricatives and strident vs. mellow are mostly triangular, but very rarely quadrangular (Jakobson, Fant, Halle, 1955, 25). The change from palatal stops to affricates signified the elimination of the new series and the return to the original three series. This again reminds one of what happened in the OE vocalism, where the period of extension in timbre oppositions was followed by simplification and a return to the status quo ante. The parallel between developments in the vocalism and in the consonantism is also chronological. The split in the back consonants took place together with /-umlaut in the fifth and sixth centuries. Palatal /k'/ appeared in initial position by the eighth century, before the umlauted vowels became front vowels. The palatal stops became affricates in Late OE, i.e., after the ninth century.26 Thus both timbre oppositions in the vocalism and localization oppositions in the consonantism experienced extension up to the eighth century; from the ninth century both were simplified until they returned to their original state before the extension had begun. The major sound changes in OE vowels and consonants can all be described as manifestations of one dynamic process which involved all the phonemic oppositions based on tone features.

26

1. P. Ivanova, "Sistema soglasnyh i jeje dinamika v drevneanglijskom jazyke", Filologiceskije nauki, 1963, 3: 32-33.

II

PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS BASED ON SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

A. THE OPPOSITIONS OF TENSENESS (LENGTH) IN OE VOWELS AND CONSONANTS

1. The phonological interpretation of protensity features The 1 st millennium in the history of English sounds was taken up by radical rearrangements in phonemic oppositions based on tone features. In the second millennium, i.e., in ME and MnE, the most active oppositions were those based on features of sonority and protensity. The latter are often called quantitative features. Before we go into the dynamics of these features, we have to define the phonological nature of what is called quantity in phonology. Quantity is regarded as belonging both to phonemics and to prosody. Phonemic and prosodic features utilize the same physical properties of sounds, i.e., their frequency, intensity and duration. The physical property of frequency provides the basis for the prosodic feature of pitch as well as for the phonemic features of timbre in vowels, localization in consonants. Prosodic stress and phonemic sonority are based on intensity. The physical similarity between prosodic and phonemic features is no obstacle for keeping them strictly apart: high or low pitch is found in syllables with any vowel timbre or consonant localization; prosodic stress is indifferent to phonemic features based on intensity. Relations between prosodic and phonemic features based on the duration of sounds sometimes seem to be more intimate. Duration has its prosodic correlate,1 but no separate phonemic correlate (Jakobson and Halle, 1962a, p. 484). There is no phonemic length among the twelve distinctive features posited by Jakobson, although there is prosodic length. Recently this position was altered. According to the new approach, three physical attributes of sound (frequency, intensity, duration) are reflected in the three prosodic features of tone, force and quantity (i.e., musical, 1 R. Jakobson and Morris Halle, "Phonology and phonetics", in Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings I ('s-Gravenhage, 1962) p. 479.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

39

dynamic and quantitative stress) as well as in three kinds of phonemic features based on tonality, sonority and protensity.2 The distinction of prosodic and phonemic features stems from the concept of segmental and suprasegmental phonological units. But the notion of phonemes as segmental units has been shattered by modern phonetics which has failed to discover identifiable segments corresponding to phonemes. It has been found that "information about any given phoneme is contained not only within one speech sound, but also within the neighbouring sounds."3 If every phonemic feature is suprasegmental in this sense, one cannot keep prosody and phonemics apart. But phonemics does not clash with all prosody: only so-called intrasyllabic prosody is involved. The distinction between phonemic and intrasyllabic prosodic features cannot and need not be maintained. All phonological distinctive features which function inside the syllable are phonemic; all prosodic features are intersyllabic by definition.4 Accordingly, only those quantitative distinctions will be considered prosodic which affect relations between syllables. Proto-Germanic undoubtedly had prosodic length, reflexes of which are found in Germanic languages. An instance is Sievers' rule about the dependence of the fate of final /i u/ on the length of the root syllable in West Germanic languages. Another instance is the different reflection of /j/ after long and short root syllables. Does this mean that Germanic languages counted moras rather than syllables? No, that would be a simplification. Germanic languages provide plentiful evidence that prosodic length of the stressed syllable lost its relevance very early. In Gothic the distribution ofji/ei, i.e., the location of the syllabic boundary, was mostly dependent on the length of the preceding syllable - wasjis '(thou) dressest', harjis 'army', but domeis '(thou) deemest', hairdeis 'herdsman'. However, this distribution was no longer regular in Gothic and could be abolished in favour of a non-phonetic distribution. Thus only //' is found in neuter nouns of the ya-stem, even after long syllables (gen. sing, reikjis Of the state', arbjis Of the inheritance'), and in masculine nouns of the jin/jan-stem (gen. sing, bandjins Of the captive'). In OE Sievers' rule determined the presence or absence of the suffixal vowel depending on the prosodic length of the root syllable; hence the alternations u ~ zero, e ~ zero. But this alternation, though wide-spread, was by no means phonetically regular. Suffixal -u was found after long stems in nouns {brsedu 'breadth', hxlu 'health', ieldu 'age', strengu 'strength') and in adjectives (nom. ace. pi. neut. grenu 'green', wildu 'wild'). We can conclude that prosodic length of the stressed syllable had been a determining factor in the period preceding Gothic and OE, but it was no longer active in 2

R. Jakobson and Morris Halle, "Tenseness and laxness", in Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings I ('s-Gravenhage, 1962) p. 553. 3 L. A. Cistovic et al., Rec: artikulacija i vosprijatije (Moskva, Leningrad, 1965) p. 186. * Cf. S. K. Saumjan, Problemy teoreticeskoj fonologii (Moskva, 1962) p. 64.

40

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

these languages. The scholars who insist that OE was a language counting moras3 apparently overlook these facts. In the subsequent history of English no intersyllabic quantitative relations could be observed; the quantitative properties of the stressed syllable had no influence on the presence or structure of unstressed syllables in the word. Phonemic length, on the contrary, has been prominent in English all through its history. True, its place in the system of phonemic oppositions varied; it entered the complex distinctive features of different oppositions. Quantitative distinctions are often regarded as manifestations of the phonemic feature of tenseness. The phonetic nature of the latter is not yet sufficiently clarified. Tenseness was usually connected with muscular tension6. Recent investigations of both the phonic and phonological aspects of tenseness have enabled us to treat it as a broad complex of properties based on the amount of energy spent in articulation. Pressure of the air stream and duration of articulation are components of tenseness. The complex phonemic feature of consonantal tenseness is made up of tension, intensity of pressure, aspiration and pre-aspiration (Jakobson and Halle 1962a, 484). Later duration was added to the complex and the physical basis of tenseness was shown to be the same in consonants and vowels (Jakobson and Halle, 1962b). 2. The establishment of tenseness oppositions in OE vowels ind consonants and the distributional properties of tense phonemes In OE there was a phonemic opposition of short vs. long vowels in which the \ atter were marked. Among OE consonants there was also a phonemic opposition of short vs. long (geminate) consonants, in which the geminates were marked. Both oppositions can be described as tenseness oppositions. Tense vowels in Early OE could be found before any lax consonant, as well as before clusters of fricatives with stops - /st ft xt sk/. Lax vowels also occurred in these positions, which were then positions of distinction for vocalic tenseness. Only lax vowels could occur before geminates (i.e., tense consonants) and before clusters of sonants with noise consonants, if no morphological boundary ran within the cluster. Likewise, a succession of two identical consonants was biphonemic and not a geminate, if there was a morphological boundary between them.7 That explains the tense vowels in words like hxl-pu 'health' andfed-de 'fed'. There was an etymologically long vowel before a geminate or a tautomorphemic cluster in the Past Tense of strong verbs of the VII class -feoll 'fell', heold 'held', feng 'caught', heng 'hung'. But whether the vowel was actually long in OE remains doubtful (Sievers, 1951, 337-338). 5 Josef Vachek, "Notes on the quantitative correlation of vowels in the phonematic development of English", in Melanges Fernand Masse (Paris, 1959) p. 446. 6 Daniel Jones, An outline of English phonetics, 9th edition (Cambridge, 1960) pp. 39-40; Charles F. Hockett, A manual of phonology (Baltimore, 1955) p. 31. 7 A. I. Smirnitskij, Drevneanglijskij jazyk (Moskva, 1955) p. 92.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

41

Thus the phonemic opposition of vocalic tenseness was represented only by its unmarked member - the lax vowel before tense consonants, as well as before clusters of sonants with noise consonants. Why vocalic tenseness was distinguished before lax consonants, not before tense consonants, is clear enough - this is an instance of dissimilative neutralization. Vocalic and consonantal tenseness were two related oppositions, and each was neutralized in the vicinity of the marked member of the other opposition, vocalic tenseness being neutralized before tense consonants and consonantal tenseness after tense vowels (cf. Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 208-209). It is not clear, however, why two types of consonant clusters behaved differently with regard to vocalic tenseness - the latter was distinguished before clusters of fricatives with stops, but not clusters of sonants with noises. OE was not alone in this disparity: in Gothic the long vowels spelt e, ο and the diphthongs ei, iu, ai, au occurred before clusters beginning with fricatives in words like kriustan 'to crunch', laists 'trace', grefts Order', leihts 'light', heist 'dough', haifsts 'litigation', but never occurred before clusters beginning with sonants. The sources of the disparity were probably Proto-Germanic. In that language /i u/ together with /r l m n/ constituted the distributional class of semi-vocalic phonemes which could make the second mora in the syllabic centre. The syllabic centre was followed by one or two noise consonants, which could begin a new syllable. In other words, the simplest succession A+T (where A stands for any monomoric vowel, T for any noise consonant) could be developed into AU+ST or AR+ST (where U stands for /if or /u/, R - for /if, /If, /m/ or /n/). The sonant R in the succession ART, just like U in AUT, belonged to the syllabic centre, not to the consonantal periphery which the sonant could join only before a vowel. The centre and the periphery in ART were thus divided AR+T, not A+RT. As trimoric syllabic centres probably never existed in Proto-Germanic, the sonant R could join only monomoric vowels in the centre. The syllabic centre could consist of a monomoric vowel (A), a bimoric vowel (A:), a diphthong (AU) or (AR). The consonantal periphery (originally heterosyllabic) consisted of a single consonant (T or R, the latter being equivalent to T in this position) or a consonant cluster (ST or TR, but never RT). The resulting successions can be tabulated: Monomoric centre

A+T A+R A+ST

Bimoric centres

AR+T AR+R AR+ST

AU+T AU+R AU+ST

A:+T A: + R A: + ST

(Combinations with TR have been omitted as irrelevant to our discussion).

42

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

The liquidation of the Proto-Germanic class of sonants and the abolition of prosodic (moric) quantity changed the situation radically. Diphthongs of the AU type were monophonemicized into tense vowels, which preserved the distributional properties of the Proto-Germanic bimoric syllabic centres and occurred only before a single sonant (formerly AU+R), but not a cluster beginning with a sonant. The remaining four sonants /r l m n/ became consonants from the viewpoint of their distribution. The succession AR+T turned into A+RT. The new consonant cluster RT could historically follow only a lax, formerly monomoric vowel. The new situation can be tabulated as follows: Lax vowels AT AR AST

ART ARR ARST

Tense vowels A:T A:R A:ST

The ambivalence of Proto-Germanic sonants enabled them to combine with one another on syllabic boundaries. In their vocalic quality they appeared at the end of the syllabic centre; in their consonantal quality they could function as the beginning of the next syllable. When the sonants lost their vocalic properties, their mutual assimilation in successions of the ARR (formerly AR+R) type was made possible, the natural outcome of which was their monophonemicization into tense (geminate) consonants. This heralded the emergence of the consonantal opposition of tenseness. Having been born in the sonants, it then spread to all consonants according to the formula 1:11 = n : nn = T : TT.8 In Gothic the opposition of gemination (tenseness?) involved only the sonants and /s/, its extension to the rest of the consonants was just beginning. In OE the consonantal opposition of tenseness was fully extended, embracing all consonants except semi-vocalic /j w/ (judging by Holtzmann's Law these two phonemes were also geminated in East and North Germanic). In West Germanic the decisive step in the extension was the lengthening of consonants. The establishment of the consonantal opposition of tenseness in the process of integrating the sonants /r l m n/ into the consonantism and the further extension of this opposition have a direct analogy in the vocalism, where the former sonants /i u/ also participated in the extension of the opposition of tenseness. As was shown above (see p. 19), the new tense vowels /iu: eo: ssa.·/, resulting from the monophonemicization of Germanic M-diphthongs, caused the emergence of the correlated lax vowels. In very much the same way the appearance of tense sonants /r: 1: m: n:/ served as a catalyst for the creation of tense noise consonants. The emerging phonemes attracted into their dispersion fields the allophones of noise consonants with 8

J. Kurylowicz, Esquisses linguistiques (Wroctaw-Krakow, 1960) pp. 272-73.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

43

the largest degree of phonic tenseness. Such allophones appeared between a lax vowel and a sonant. This was the most favourable position for tense allophones because vocalic and consonantal tenseness tend to dissimilate syntagmatically; consonants are therefore more tense between lax vowels and sonants, especially the least consonantal of sonants - /j/. Chronologically the establishment of the consonantal opposition of tenseness can be placed between the 2nd and 5th centuries A.D. (Kurylowicz, 1960,268). It coincided with the beginning of timbre rearrangements in the vowels, which were the result of the same event, i.e., the disintegration of the class of sonants in Germanic. The latter must have taken place on the threshold of the first millennium A.D. It may be regarded as the last event in the phonology of Germanic, whereas the vocalic and consonantal changes resulting from it were probably the first phonological processes in the histories of the separate Germanic languages. After the consonantal opposition of tenseness was fully extended and practically all consonants became either tense or lax, the possible positions for tense and lax vowels were as follows:

Positions where vocalic tenseness is distinguished Positions where vocalic tenseness is not distinguished

Lax vowels AT AST

Tense vowels A:T A:ST

ART AT:

The disparity in the distribution of ST-clusters and RT-clusters was thus historically conditioned. This does not mean that we have nothing to explain. The disparity continued to exist long after the conditioning factors had disappeared. It had developed at a time when ST was a tautosyllabic cluster beginning a new syllable and therefore quite indifferent to the number of moras in the preceding syllabic centre, while RT was not at all a consonant cluster - R belonged to the syllabic centre and T was the periphery of the next syllable. After the class of sonants had disintegrated the difference between S and R diminished, but ST could begin a new syllable which RT could not do. This difference, nevertheless, lost its importance with the spread of monosyllabic forms which equated ST and RT as final clusters. In the changed circumstances ST-clusters became more numerous and varied in OE. Originally only /s/ could occupy the position of S. New clusters were now formed which never began a new syllable - /ft/, /xt/, also /rft/, /rat/. The latter two belonged to the subtype RST, which was often simplified in OE - the nasal sonants were eliminated from the position of R. As the preceding vowel was lengthened in the process, the succession A:ST gained in frequency. This shows that the number of consonants after a vowel was in itself irrelevant to the realization of

44

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

tenseness in the vowel; a consonant cluster was not an obstacle to the distinction of vocalic tenseness. As ST-clusters and RT-clusters were brought closer together, the disparity in their behaviour with regard to tense and lax consonants became a kind of phonological relic with no synchronic justification. The integration of sonants in the consonantism could not be complete without the liquidation of the disparity, which could be accomplished in two ways - either neutralizing vocalic tenseness before all consonant clusters, or introducing tense vowels before RT-clusters. The former alternative would have meant the shortening of long vowels before /sk st ft xt/, the latter meant the lengthening of short vowels before at least some RT-clusters. For obvious functional reasons the second alternative was materialized. 3. Vowel lengthening before certain consonant clusters as the final stage in the extension of tenseness oppositions in OE The OE lengthening of vowels before homorganic clusters has always been difficult to explain. Lengthening before clusters seems strange, even mysterious, when one would have expected a more natural lengthening before single consonants. Lengthening before clusters manifestly contradicts the tendency towards 'syllabic equilibrium' which is traditionally believed to have caused the shortening of vowels before consonant clusters. Explanations of the OE lengthening given by phonologists are usually very artificial. For instance, an explanation has been offered which sees the lengthening as a result of the postvocalic cluster being tautosyllabic; the syllabic boundary in the OE verb 'to bind' is accordingly believed to have run bind-an (Eliason, 13-14). The positive aspect in N. E. Eliason's approach is his rejection of the traditional idea of 'syllabic equilibrium' as a constant tendency in the history of English. 'Tendencies' in general have no explanatory force, because they inevitably turn out to be either tautological periphrases of facts9 or mere fictions. The history of English has instances of both: for ME the 'tendency towards syllabic equilibrium' is a description (however inadequate) of historic facts elevated to the rank of 'tendency', whereas for OE the very existence of such a tendency is fictitious. At no time in OE is there evidence of an equilibrium of lengthening and shortening. Theoretically, 'syllabic equilibrium' presumes that the language in question counts moras, which OE did not do. But even if it did, one must not forget that prosodic features belong to the syllabic centre, not to the syllabic periphery. The centre, not the periphery is divided into moras (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 166-167, 169 if.). The idea of 'syllabic equilibrium', on the contrary, is based on counting moras in the consonantal periphery of the syllable. There is a view that the OE lengthening before homorganic clusters diminished the number of positions in which vowel length was distinguished (Vachek, 1959, 9

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "Islandsko-norvezskijeizmenenija soglasnyh: k voprosu o suScnosti zvukovyh izmenenij", Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1963, 5: 60.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

45

447). This could not happen because Germanic had never had long vowels before clusters beginning with a sonant.10 The vocabulary of OE was not supplied with a stock of new words in which a long vowel appeared before such a cluster. Perhaps the only exception was the pronoun xlc 'each', whose phonetic shape was moulded quite individually. Consequently, vocalic tenseness (length) was practically not distinguished before clusters beginning with a sonant. But the practical absence of distinction in any given position is not always due to neutralization. Neutralization of a phonemic opposition is not established by merely stating that the opposition in question is not realized in a certain position. Neutralization is determined by the phonological nature of the opposition subject to neutralization as well as of the context causing neutralization (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 206-207). The only position where vocalic tenseness was naturally neutralized was the position before a tense (geminate) consonant. There were no phonological reasons for the neutralization of vocalic tenseness before RT-clusters. A distributional situation arose in this position which is described as „apparent neutralization".11 "Apparent neutralization" is a kind of distributional 'hole' which can eventually be filled. Such a 'hole' existed for OE tense vowels, and it was filled by certain allophones of lax vowels going over to the corresponding tense vowel phonemes. This redistribution of allophones between lax and tense vowels is described as OE vowel lengthening before homorganic clusters. As is usual in allophonic redistributions, the process differed in intensity from vowel to vowel, from cluster to cluster, it was modified by analogy.12 Since there is dissimilation between vocalic and consonantal tenseness in the same syllable (see p. 43), the most tense allophones appear in vowels before the most lax consonants. In a cluster both consonants were phonologically lax, but a difference in phonic tenseness was quite sufficient for a corresponding variation in vocalic tenseness on the allophonic level. Voiceless consonants are phonically more tense than their voiced correlates; hence, voiced consonants must cause a comparatively greater tenseness in the preceding vowels.13 Lengthening occurred therefore chiefly before clusters with voiced consonants. Contrary to the established view, homorganic articulation in the cluster was hardly decisive. The fact is that all OE clusters of sonants with voiced consonants were homorganic. After IT I or /!/ non-homorganic consonants (i.e., labial and velar) were either voiceless stops, or fricatives which were indifferent to voice phonemically. Nasal sonants never made clusters with non-homorganic consonants. The list of lengthening clusters /rd 10

143 · 11

J. Kurylowicz, "L'apophonie en indo-europden", Prace fezykoznawcze, IX (Wroclaw, 1956) p.

Bohumil Trnka, "Poznamky ke kombinatorickym variantam a k neutralisaci", Casopis pro moderni filologii, XXIV (1938): 267. 12 N. H. Miftahova, Fonologiceskij analiz drevneanglijskogo udlinenija kratkih glasnyh pered gomorgannymi gruppami soglasnyh, Avtoreferat dissertacii (Leningradskij Universitet, 1964) p. 11. 13 Ernst A. Meyer, "Englische Lautdauer: Eine experimentalphonetische Untersuchung", Skrifter utgifna af Kongl. Humanistiska vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala, VIII. 3 (1903): 50-51.

46

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

Id mb nd ng/ is therefore an exhaustive list of clusters made of sonants and phonemically voiced consonants. On the other hand, clusters with voiceless consonants, even if they were homorganic, never caused lengthening. Therefore the role of voice in the OE lengthening before consonant clusters was very important14. Homorganic articulation was probably a factor where voice was irrelevant. Thus lengthening could take place in clusters of /r/ with fricatives if the latter were homorganic [6 z], but not labial [v] or velar [γ]. When the tense allophones of lax vowels before clusters of sonants with voiced consonants were incorporated in the dispersion fields of tense vowel phonemes, the vocalic opposition of tenseness acquired a pattern of distinction and neutralization which was phonologically justified: it was neutralized before tense consonants and distinguished before lax consonants - single or clustered. For OE sonants it signified the end of their integration in the consonantism. It also culminated the extension of the vocalic opposition of tenseness, which now functioned in every possible position. The pair of related oppositions - vocalic and consonantal tenseness - thus achieved the maximum of their extension. The process of extension occupied about a thousand years - from the threshold of the first millennium A.D. till the ninth or tenth century (when OE lengthening presumably took place). This period was also filled with radical rearrangements in the domain of oppositions based on tone features - timbre and localization. The developments in both tone oppositions and protensity oppositions were responses of the phonological system to the same stimulus - the disintegration of the separate class of sonants and the resulting integration of its former members in the vocalism or consonantism. The chronological limits of both processes were roughly the same. But within those limits interesting differences existed. At every particular stage within the period either one or the other process was more active. The extension of tone oppositions was especially active between the fifth and eighth centuries, when breaking, palatalization, umlauts, the split in the back consonants took place. After the eighth century the results of this process were either consolidated or eliminated. Protensity oppositions (i.e., vocalic and consonantal tenseness) made the biggest step in their extension before the fifth century, in the pre-OE period, when the West Germanic lengthening of consonants gave tense correlates to practically all lax consonants. Between the fifth and eighth centuries the extension of vocalic tenseness was subordinated to the extension of timbre gliding - both oppositions were combined to produce lax correlates to tense diphthongoid vowel phonemes. Only after the extension of tone oppositions was over, in the ninth and tenth centuries could protensity oppositions make the final step in their extension. The conclusion can be made that sound changes are coordinated chronologically to preclude more than one group of oppositions being involved simultaneously. 14

Cf. Norman E. Eliason, "Old English vowel lengthening and vowel shortening before consonant groups", Studies in Philology, XLV. 1 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1948): 15, footnote 55.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

47

In other words, a phonological system is not restructured in several areas at a time. This might provide the answer to the question how phonological systems combine constant movement in diachrony with stability in synchrony. When change affects an area in the system, there is always a much larger area of stability in it, including phonemic oppositions which are not affected by the change and provide for the smooth functioning of the system regardless of the change under way.15 After the change is over the phonemic oppositions involved in it return to the area of stability, and other oppositions might then enter the area of change. An instance can be found in Old High German where vocalic timbre rearrangements (umlaut), analogous to OE changes and conditioned by similar factors, could start only after radical rearrangements in the consonantism (Lautverschiebung) ended.

B. THE REARRANGEMENT IN THE SYSTEM OF PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS IN EARLY ME

1. The replacement of the consonantal oppositions of tenseness and voice by the opposition of fused tenseness By the tenth century the two protensity oppositions had reached the highest point of their extension. But, as was the case with tone oppositions, the maximum proved to be far from the optimal structure of the phonological system. Serious anomalies appeared in the realization of the consonantal opposition of tenseness. Its only position of distinction was the intervocalic position, mostly between the stressed vowel of the root and the unstressed vowel of the inflexion. In forms without inflexions tense vowels got into final position, which neutralized tenseness. Forms without inflexions were frequent in OE, especially in nouns and adjectives with 'long' stems (and a geminate made the stem long). For this reason tense consonants could not carry a significant functional load.16 Another position of neutralization for consonantal tenseness was the initial position, where tense (geminate) consonants could never appear. Thus the position of maximal distinction for OE consonants was not the initial position where only half of all the consonant phonemes could appear. There is reason to maintain, however, that typologically the initial position is normally the position of maximal distinction for consonants. It is characteristic of Indo-European languages that the number of consonants found in initial position is at least as large as the number of consonants in medial position.17 J. Kurylowicz says that "pozycja wyglosu, a nie naglosu, 15 Cf. G. S. Klyckov, "Tipologiceskaja gipoteza rekonstrukcii indojevropejskogo prajazyka" Voprosy jazykoznanija 1963, 5: 5; Plotkin, 1964: 122. 16 Cf. Hans Kurath, "The loss of long consonants and the rise of voiced fricatives in Middle English", Language, ΧΧΧΠ. 3 (1956): 441. 17 N. S. Trubetzkoy, "Gedanken ber das Indogermanenproblem", Acta linguistica I. 2 (Copenhagen, 1939): 84.

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bywa pozycja. synkretyzmu (neutralizacji)" (Kurylowicz, 1960, 221). The concept of minimal system has been suggested which is "found under unfavorable phonetic conditions, i.e. in unstressed positions, in final position or in positions where, for other reasons, the syntagmatic distinctions are difficult to maintain".18 It is noteworthy that the maximal extension of the consonantal opposition of tenseness, seemingly increasing the symmetry of the whole phonological system, in fact contradicted the requirements of symmetry. In intervocalic position consonants are highly susceptible to assimilative influences like voicing, fricativization, vocalization. Marked phonemes (in this case tense consonants) are known to be more resistant to assimilation than their unmarked (lax) correlates. Therefore sixteen tense (geminate) consonants were found in intervocalic position, but many of them had no lax correlates in this position. Only nine of the sixteen had such correlates - all sonants /r: 1: m: n:/, all voiceless stops /p: t: k': k:/ and the voiced stop /d:/. The voiced stops /b: g': g:/ and the voiceless fricative /x:/ had lax correlates which never occurred in intervocalic position (Ivanova, 1963: 33 and 39). Finally, the voiceless fricatives /f: s: Θ:/ were distinguished from their correlates not only as tense from lax, but also as voiceless from voiced, i.e., by two phonemic features (Ivanova, 1963: 38-39). As can be seen, relations between tense and lax consonants in the position of their maximal distinction were by no means as simple as the existence of the opposition of tenseness could lead one to presume. The anomalies of a structural and functional nature, which had resulted from the maximal extension of the opposition of tenseness in the consonantism, eventually brought about a radical restructuring of the consonantism between OE and ME. The two parts of the restructuring were the loss of gemination and the voicing of fricatives. Gemination disappeared in the tenth century in the North of England and in the twelfth century in the South. For the stops this resulted in the paradigmatic merger of tense and lax phonemes - 8 pairs of correlates produced 8 phonemes /p t k' > ts k b d g' > dz g/. In three pairs the distribution of tense and lax phonemes had been practically complementary, which undoubtedly was a factor in the merger. A corresponding merger also took place in the sonants / r i m n/. Does the merger mean that the consonantal opposition of tenseness no longer functioned in ME? The clue to the answer lies in the sound changes that involved the fricatives. Unlike the stops where two phonemic oppositions of tenseness and voice created four-member bundles, e.g., /t-t:-d-d:/, the fricatives had only two phonemes for each local series, which were reflected in OE spelling as f-ff, s-ss etc. They are presumed to have been opposed in gemination, i.e., tenseness, not in voice. This agrees with the thesis that in languages with independent phonemic oppositions of tenseness and voice the latter is confined to stops and does not embrace the fricatives (Jakobson, Fant, Halle, 1955, 38). But the presence of the phonemic feature of voice in OE frica18

Bertil Malmberg, "Minimal systems, potential distinctions, and primitive structures", Proceedings of the 9th international congress of linguists in Cambridge, Mass., (The Hague, 1964): 80.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

49

tives is presumed by some scholars. The opposition of length is believed to have been accompanied by a difference in voicing - in intervocalic position long fricatives were voiceless, whereas short fricatives were voiced (Kurath, 1956: 438). I. P. Ivanova thinks that fricatives could have been opposed by the joint action of two phonemic features. The proximity of the two oppositions of tenseness and voice is well known. In languages without a separate phonemic opposition of voice phonic voicelessness is usually part of the complex phonemic feature of tenseness. Such broadening of a complex feature may be possible even in a language with voice as a separate phonemic feature. In stops where tenseness and voice were separate phonemic features in OE the size of the phonic complex underlying each feature was evidently limited by the very fact that they were separate. In fricatives where only one phonemic opposition was active instead of two, its phonic complex was obviously broader, because it could include the physical distinctions used by both oppositions. In other words, the two oppositions could be fused in OE fricatives. It would be wrong to identify the fused opposition with any of the two separate oppositions. That makes it difficult for us to find a suitable designation for the fused opposition. But the current practice of giving names to oppositions cannot avoid such difficulties. Oppositions are usually named after some phonic component of their complex distinctive feature, the choice of the component being purely arbitrary. Therefore two oppositions bearing the same name, functioning in different languages, or in different periods of the same language, or in different syntagmatic contexts in the same language, are not identical. In this respect oppositions do not differ from phonemes. It is admitted in phonology that the symbol /t/ denotes different phonemes in OE where there was also /t: / and in MnE where the latter does not exist. Furthermore, the phonemic contents of ft/ is different in MnE tone and stone, as in the latter word the phoneme is not opposed to its voiced correlate /d/. We say that in a given context (after /s/) the phoneme /t/ is neither voiced nor voiceless, but represents what is described as the archiphoneme - a fusion of /t/ and /d/. Quite analogically we can say that in a given context (combined with friction) the opposition between certain phonemes in OE was neither tenseness nor voice, but a fusion of both, perhaps deserving the name 'arch-opposition'. The restructuring of the consonant system which took place in Late OE and Early ME can be described as the replacement of two separate oppositions of tenseness and voice by one phonemic opposition which, for want of a better name, will be designated here as 'fused tenseness'. The new opposition differed from OE consonantal tenseness in its phonic basis which was considerably broader, as it included now the absence or presence of voice. The formation of the new opposition naturally began in the fricatives. The marked member of fused tenseness is usually voiceless, \ong,fortis; the unmarked member is voiced, short, lenis. In Early OE initial fricatives were always short (i.e., unmarked in the opposition of tenseness) and voiceless (i.e., unmarked in the opposition of

50

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voice). They continued to be unmarked in Late OE, but unmarked members of the emerging opposition of fused tenseness were to be voiced, lenes. The initial fricatives were accordingly voiced in the South. After its establishment the new opposition spread to the stops, superseding the two separate oppositions. It took over the functional load of the former opposition of voice - the distinction between /p t ts k/ and /b d dz g/. Hence the impression that the opposition of voice has been preserved in English. The phonic distinction of voice and voicelessness remains part of the complex feature of fused tenseness, but the latter also includes the phonic properties of force and aspiration (cf. Jones, 1960, 153-155 and 203-204). It must be stressed that the change in the system of phonemic oppositions affected the stops and sonants more than the fricatives. As the change was an extension of the state, which had already existed among the fricatives, to the stops and sonants, it was natural that it brought about phonemic mergers among the latter. There were no such mergers in the fricatives. What was seriously affected was the distribution of the fricatives. It is traditionally presumed that new voiced fricatives /ν ζ δ/ came into being, resulting from voicing - a sound change conditioned by position. H. Kurath investigated the process in a broader light, seeing in it a change of phonemic relations between OE long and short fricatives, rather than a change in the pronunciation of fricatives. Such an approach had been advocated by H. Penzl.19 It was discovered that no new fricative phonemes were created - only the phonemic relations between existing phonemes changed. Moreover, there was no phonetic change, because all the fricatives retained their pronunciation - voiced if they had been lax, voiceless if they had been tense. The change in phonemic relations inevitably brought about a change in the pattern of distinction and neutralization for fricatives. Unlike OE tenseness, the new opposition of fused tenseness is not neutralized in initial or final position. Distributional 'holes' appear for lax fricatives in both positions. They were gradually filled in ME after the fall of the unstressed vowel, which turned the intervocalic position into final position, and with the influx of French and Latin borrowings. By the way, speaking of French borrowings, it must be stated that their role in the phonological history of English was confined to filling distributional 'holes' which were always products of indigenous development. Not a single phoneme was borrowed from French into English. English did not develop nasalized vowels or front round vowels; neither did the Old French affricate /ts/ penetrate into English. The only phonological influence of French was the introduction of voiced fricatives /v z/ (as well as the voiced affricate /dz/) into initial position. The possibility of the introduction was created by the change in phonemic relations between English consonants and had nothing to do with any foreign influence. 19

Herbert Penzl, "A phonemic change in Early Old English" Language, XX. 2 (1944): 86.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

51

Unlike /v z/, interdental /o/ could not appear in initial position in foreign words. A domestic source was found to fill this 'hole'. Vocalic tenseness was neutralized in unstressed position in OE, where vowels were always short. Tense (geminate) consonants were also rare in unstressed syllables. Hence both oppositions were probably neutralized in unstressed position. It was natural therefore to find the unmarked members of fused tenseness - i.e., voiced fricatives - in unstressed words in Late OE and Early ME. After the establishment of the new opposition it was no longer neutralized in unstressed position, but the voiced (now lax) fricative was kept in certain words like the, they, thus, then, this, that, though (as well as was, his, as, with, o/etc.) as a grammatical sign of their formal or pronominal character. One of the most important consequences of the replacement of the OE oppositions of tenseness and voice by the new opposition of fused tenseness was the increased resistance of consonant phonemes to neutralization. OE tenseness was neutralized in all positions except the intervocalic position and did not prevent assimilation even in that position. The opposition of voice could also be neutralized in final position (Sievers / Brunner, 1951, 200-01). The opposition of fused tenseness is based on a broader complex of phonic distinctions than any of the two oppositions it superseded, and is therefore more stable. It is not neutralized in initial or final position. Its only position of neutralization is in clusters of noise consonants. J. Vachek was the first to notice this. His explanation of the fact is Ideological: he believes the replacement of the opposition of voice by that of tenseness to have been caused by the needs of English grammar and vocabulary. It was necessary to prevent the rise of homonymy due to the neutralization of voice in final position and to mark the end of the stem when the final unstressed vowel was dropped by the end of the fourteenth century.20 It is of course tempting to see the replacement as proof of direct connections between tiers in language. But J. Vachek's explanation ignores data that show the replacement to have taken place in Early ME, not Late ME; it fails to connect the replacement with the loss of gemination. Of course, the fact that by the time the final unstressed vowel was dropped English consonants had acquired a phonetically stable, neutralization-proof opposition instead of two weaker oppositions was of paramount importance for the development of English phonology and grammar. But the replacement was a response to structural and functional anomalies already visible in OE, not to the hypothetical effects of the fall of the final unstressed vowel in Late ME. Summing up the restructuring of the consonantism between OE and ME, one could describe it as a consonant shift. It is quite appropriate to speak of "the sweeping changes in the consonant system of Middle English" (Kurath, 1956: 437). The process affected all OE consonants except the semivowels /j w/. The number of stops and sonants was halved. 20 Josef Vachek, "Notes on the development of language seen as a system of systems", Sbomik praci filosoficke fakulty Brnenske university, VII. A6 (1958): 97ff.; and "Some less familiar aspects of the analytical trend of English", Brno Studies in English, III (1961): 53 ff.

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Why was the scope of the change not noticed by classical phonetics which registered the loss of geminates and the voicing of fricatives as two separate sound changes? A radical consonant shift was registered in only one Germanic language - Old High German. It has recently been demonstrated that consonant shifts similar to the second Lautverschiebung in scope and phonological content took place in Icelandic and Danish without being reflected in writing and were therefore ignored by phoneticians. The shifts in Icelandic and Danish eliminated the opposition of voice from the respective consonantisms - the opposition that had been introduced into the Germanic consonant system by the first Lautverschiebung.'2'1 But English also went through an analogous shift in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which was likewise overlooked by phoneticians. The shifts in Icelandic and Danish were discovered by retrospective analysis - both languages display force and aspiration as distinctive features of consonants, but do not utilize voice now; consequently, voice must have been replaced by another phonemic feature in the history of these languages. The same question was asked about English: since OE had the opposition of voice and MnE has the opposition of tenseness, "one is faced with the problem of how and why the revaluation of the opposition of voice into that of tension can have taken place" (Vachek, 1961, 55). We know the answer J. Vachek gave to the question: the shift happened because at a certain stage in the history of English, when the final unstressed vowel was dropped, "the best, and perhaps the only possible manner in which the concerned type of opposition could be maintained consisted in its revaluation: the correlation of voice came to be revalued into that of tension" (Vachek, 1961, 57). The shift is thus directly connected with the analytical trend in English grammar. But it appears that voice has been replaced by tenseness in at least four Germanic languages, in three of which - High German, Danish and Icelandic - the final unstressed vowels have not disappeared and in one of which - Icelandic - there has been practically no analytical trend. As for the reflection of the change in English writing (or rather absence of reflection), "the most important changes are not necessarily those which find reflection in writing" (Steblin-Kamenskij, 1961b: 103). The best reflection in writing is given to changes in the distribution of phonemes in words, not to changes in the system of phonemes or phonemic oppositions.22 But the consonant shift in question is characterized by preserving the pronunciation of words. The changes in writing were caused mostly by the introduction of the letter v. It is noteworthy that the new letter z did not replace s where the latter denoted a voiced consonant. The double letters were largely preserved after the loss of gemination, as the phonic length of the consonant was in many cases unchanged and linked to the nature of the preceding vowel. 21

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "Suäönosf germanskih peredvizenij soglasnyh", Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1961, 20: 102-04. 22 M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "Three types of sound change", Philologica Pragensia, III. 4(1960): 195.

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2. The replacement of the opposition of vocalic tenseness by the new opposition of abruptness The rearrangement in the consonantal opposition of tenseness inevitably affected the related opposition of vocalic tenseness. It can be demonstrated that the latter also underwent a radical change in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By the twelfth century, after the simplification in timbre oppositions, the English vowel system was reduced to the following state: Short vowels Long vowels i e

u 0

a

i: e: x: ==- ε;

u: ο: et: =>· a:

The two subsystems were asymmetrical, though in OE the requirement of symmetry had been strong enough to cause rearrangements in the system. The 'Ion' vowel phonemes were now more numerous, and during the ME period the gap widened. While in Early OE the existence of two low long vowels /ae: a=/ had caused a corresponding split of the low short vowel into /ae/ and /a/ (Krupatkin, 1962b, 59), in Late OE the existence of /ae: a=/ proved insufficient even for the preservation of /ae a/ as two separate phonemes. This paradoxical fact can have only one explanation: the phonemic relations between long and short vowels had changed. The numerical preponderance of long vowels shows that they were now the unmarked members in the phonemic opposition between the 'long' and 'short' vowel phonemes. J. H. Greenberg formulated the language universal that the number of marked phonemes cannot exceed that of unmarked members in the same phonemic opposition, but he qualified the universal by allowing the opposition between long and short vowels to depart from it (Greenberg, 1966, 513). Long vowels may indeed be more numerous than their short correlates. But the qualification is necessary only if long vowels are always marked in the opposition of vowel length. However, this is not so. Long vowels are indeed marked when they participate in the opposition of tenseness as tense phonemes, which was the case in OE. In MnE there is another vocalic opposition: the so-called short vowels are phonemically checked and therefore marked in the phonemic opposition of checked vs. unchecked (free) vowels. The latter are naturally more numerous. This corroborates Greenberg's universal and makes his qualification of it unnecessary. As the merger of the two low short vowels into /a/ took place in Late OE, it is possible to maintain that about the twelfth century the opposition of vocalic tenseness was replaced by the opposition of checked vs. free vowels. The latter is often described as the opposition of contact - close vs. loose contact.

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It is believed to be realized phonically by the onset of the following consonant checking the articulation of the vowel. As the phonic realization of contact involves both the vowel and the following consonant, contact is regarded as suprasegmental and is classified as an intrasyllabic prosodic feature. But all intrasyllabic features are here treated as phonemic features (see p. 39). Phonetic investigations seem to support this treatment. It has been found that, contrary to the wide-spread belief (cf. Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 196), the onset of the consonant cuts off nothing from the articulation of the 'checked' vowel and begins only after the vowel has passed its peak and completed its articulation. The difference between close and loose contact lies in the articulation of the vowel itself; close contact means quicker fading of the articulation, in loose contact fading is gradual. The speed of fading can be measured by the so-called angle of convergence, which is about 85° for Modern German 'short' vowels and about 35° for 'long' vowels on the average.23 The phonemic opposition of checked vs. free vowels can be described as based on the phonic feature of abrupt or smooth offglide.24 It will be designated here as the phonemic opposition of abruptness. R. Jakobson is inclined to treat the opposition of checked vs. unchecked as a consonantal opposition (Jakobson, Fant, Halle, 1955, 23) involving glottalization. But the difference between checked and free vowels with quick and gradual fading respectively can be covered by R. Jakobson's definition: "higher rate of discharge of energy within a reduced interval of time vs. lower rate of discharge within a longer interval" (Jakobson and Halle, 1962a, 486). The following consonant participates in the phonic realization of the vocalic opposition of abruptness. Its presence is indispensable after abrupt vowels, at least in English and German. It has a sharper onset, which together with the abrupt offglide of the vowel creates the acoustic impression of close contact, and is usually longer, contrasting with the short duration of the vowel. What caused the emergence of the new vocalic opposition on the threshold of ME? It has been shown (see p. 52) that the consonant shift was accomplished with minimal changes in the pronunciation of words. But it brought about a radical change in the syntagmatic relations between the vowel and the following consonant. Before the shift, in OE there had been mutual dissimilative neutralization of consonantal and vocalic tenseness next to the marked member of the related opposition. Only three sequences of a vowel and consonant had been possible - AT, AT: and A:T. The loss of phonemic gemination and the resulting merger of tense and lax stops could now lead to the appearance of tense vowels before consonants which were lax 23

Otto von Essen, "Trubetzkoy's 'fester' und 'loser Anschluss' in experimentalphonetischer Sicht", in Proceedings of the 4th international congress of phonetic sciences in Helsinki (The Hague, 1962) pp. 590 ff. 24 Herbert Pilch, Phonemtheorie, 2. Auflage, I (Basel, 1968) pp. 37-40.

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in the new opposition of fused tenseness (i.e., voiced lenes) or tense (voiceless aspirated fortes). In the latter case the established rules for the neutralization of vocalic tenseness were to be violated. If those rules were to be preserved, tense (i.e., long) vowels had to be eliminated before tense (voiceless) stops. To meet this demand, vowels would have to be shortened in a great number of words. To avoid this, the rules for the neutralization of vocalic tenseness had to be changed radically. But neutralization rules are organically bound with the very nature of the opposition to be neutralized, and changing them is tantamount to changing the nature of the opposition. The change in the system of phonemic oppositions was facilitated by the simultaneous elimination of the related consonantal opposition of tenseness based primarily on the duration of the sound. Thus the direction of the restructuring was the same for the subsystems of vocalic and consonantal oppositions. The vocalic opposition of tenseness had to be replaced by such a phonemic opposition the establishment of which required minimal sound changes in words. This could be achieved by the new opposition utilizing most of the phonic distinctions of the ousted opposition. This may be regarded as a universal requirement for any replacement of one opposition by another. Indeed, if the available phonic distinctions continue to be used, few changes in the pronunciation of words may be expected, making for a smooth, even imperceptible transition. That the same phonic properties can serve different phonemic oppositions is beyond doubt. Instances are the oppositions of voice and tenseness in consonants, oppositions of timbre and labialization in vowels, which are closely related and mutually replaceable (cf. Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 77-78). After the new phonemic opposition has been established its extension begins, which goes on for centuries and is manifested in a chain of sound changes. But they do not take place all together, and each of them is confined to a comparatively small area of the phonemic system, whereas a sound change accompanying a rearrangement in the system of oppositions would inevitably involve a much larger area. Phonemic restructuring proceeds "quite specifically step by step, as one foot advances, then becomes the base of support while the other advances. Through any one change, either pronunciation or structure remains stable." (Twaddell, 1948, 151). Periods of radical rearrangement in the system of phonemic oppositions do not coincide with periods of sound change brought about by the rearrangements. It was shown, for instance, that the replacement of two OE consonantal oppositions (tenseness and voice) by a new opposition (fused tenseness) was accomplished with practically no sound changes, for the voicing of fricatives was nothing but a reinterpretation of the existing pronunciation; the loss of gemination was not accompanied by a phonic shortening of former tense (geminate) consonants. The latter had always followed lax (short) vowels, which now became phonemically abrupt and were to be followed by phonically long consonants. The vocalic opposition of abruptness is undoubtedly the best heir to vocalic tenseness. Both include the distinction of length into their complex distinctive features.

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There are other manifestations of simi arity between abruptness and tenseness. It is worth noting that consonantal tenseness is also closely related to consonantal abruptness, or glottalization.25 Unlike vocalic tenseness, however, vocalic abruptness does not depend on the tenseness or laxness of the following consonant, which suited the needs of the phonological situation as described above. On the other hand, abruptness as a phonemic distinction of vowels is accompanied by positional length (gemination) of the following consonant (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 198); this facilitated the preservation of the pronunciation of words with geminates. Taking into consideration the close connection between vocalic tenseness and abruptness, it is quite natural that abruptness has replaced the opposition of vocalic tenseness in English as well as in some other Germanic languages.

C. THE EVOLUTION OF THE OPPOSITION OF VOCALIC ABRUPTNESS IN ME AND MnE

1. The rearrangement in the ME system of vowel phonemes and in their distribution The establishment of the new vocalic opposition of abruptness brought about changes in the distribution of vowel phonemes in accordance with the optimal rules for the distinction and neutralization of the new opposition. As the complex phonemic feature of abruptness includes the abrupt onset of the following consonant which belongs to the same syllable, the best conditions for the distinction of abruptness were to be found in closed syllables. Open syllables evidently were the position of neutralization for the opposition, for only non-abrupt vowels could be found in them. Such was the distribution of abrupt and non-abrupt vowel phonemes as it was established in ME. Its most important feature was the direct dependence of the nature of the vowel on the nature of the syllable. This distribution was mirrored with great accuracy by the graphic system of Orm. In closed syllables a short (= abrupt) vowel was designated by doubling the consonant letter, which also reflected the positional lengthening of the consonant after an abrupt vowel; the absence of doubling designated a non-abrupt vowel. The view has been expressed that Orm's system reflected a situation similar to that found in modern Scandinavian languages, where a syllable contains either a short vowel with a long consonant, or a long vowel with a short consonant; in such cases length becomes prosodic rather than phonemic, since it belongs to the syllable and not to individual phonemes.26 In this book all intrasyllabic prosodic features are treated as phonemic 25 Jakobson and Halle, 1962a, 497; and R. Jakobson, "The phonemic concept of distinctive features", in Proceedings of the 4th international congress of phonetic sciences in Helsinki (The Hague, 1962) p. 454. 26 A. S. Liberman, Sredneanglijskoje udlinenije glasnyh v otkrytom sloge s fonologiceskoj tocki zrenija, Avtoreferat dissertacii (Leningradskij Universität, 1965) p. 9.

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57

features. Whatever interpretation is adopted, it is clear that Orm reflected by his system a phonological distinction within closed syllables. As for open syllables, no systematic indications of vowel length in them, except the occasional use of breves, were given by Orm. It may be explained by the fact that in open syllables vowel length (= abruptness) was phonologically irrelevant. It does not follow that spellings like takenn, Godess, mikell indicated long (= non-abrupt) stressed vowels: neutralization could probably take place in favour of either member of the opposition, and the vowel could be long or short phonically. But this was an allophonic variation, because abrupt and non-abrupt vowel phonemes were not mutually opposed in open syllables. Such variation could naturally not be registered in Orm's graphic system. ME lengthening of vowels in open syllables was a corollary to the establishment of the vocalic opposition of abruptness, as it was natural for the unmarked nonabrupt vowels to be widespread in the position of neutralization, i.e., open syllables. But the phonic length of the vowel could differ due to many factors, primarily the raising of the vowel - low vowels were longer than high vowels; vowels also tended to be shorter if several unstressed syllables followed, or an unstressed syllable with /i/ (e.g., body) or a sonant (e.g., seven).2'' The allophonic variation was not the same in different dialects - high vowels were lengthened in the North. The replacement of OE vowel tenseness by ME vowel abruptness reduced the three possible combinations of a vowel with a consonant A:T, AT: and AT (where the colon indicates tenseness in vowels and consonants) to only two combinations A:T and AT (where the colon indicates non-abruptness in vowels). That meant that a redistribution of words was to take place. The OE type AT: was transformed into the ME type AT with an abrupt vowel. No phonic changes of length were necessary in words of this type. The stressed syllable remained closed even when a vocalic inflexion followed, because then T was doubled resulting in the sequence ATTa (which was a merger of two OE sequences AT:|A, e.g., bedd-e, and AT|TA, e.g., led-de). Before two identical consonants the vowel was always abrupt. Few changes took place in the type A:T. It usually preserved its phonically long, now phonemically non-abrupt vowel. This was favoured by the syllable becoming open when a vocalic inflexion was added. The vowel was rarely shortened (= became abrupt) before one consonant - MnE ten and stiff seem to be the only instances of such a development, though Orm showed a shortening of the vowel in 12 words of this type.28 The situation was fluid before consonant clusters: some of them caused shortening, whereas others, like /st Id nd/, permitted both short and long vowels before them. 27

A. S. Liberman, "K istorii dolgoty v sredneanglijskom", Filologiceskije nauki, 1965, 1: 127-28. Gottfried Hackmann, "Kürzung langer Tonvokale vor einfachen auslautenden Konsonanten in einsilbigen Wörtern im Alt-, Mittel- und Neuenglischen", Studien zur englischen Philologie, X (Halle a.S., 1908): 5. 28

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The third OE type AT, which became ATA when a vocalic inflexion was added, was divided between the two remaining types. This process and its results bore all the signs of phonemic redistribution between words - they were affected by a host of factors, both general and individual (cf. Steblin-Kamenskij, 1960a: 195-197). First, redistribution naturally favoured the unmarked phonemes, hence lengthening predominated. Second, the relative frequency of inflected and uninflected forms of the word was essential, as it made the root syllable predominantly open or close; lengthening was therefore typical of verbs, which had few uniflected forms, and rare in nouns, especially masculine and neuter, whose most frequent forms were uninflected. Thirdly, the raising of the vowel was a factor, as high vowels were not lengthened as a rule. Finally, analogy with other words could also be a factor. The factors enumerated above enable us to determine the general features of the process as a whole. But they cannot be expected to account for the destiny of the vowel in every individual word. How, for instance, can lengthening be explained in OE col =- MnE coal! In the singular the word had a closed syllable, the plural could hardly be frequently used in a noun of this semantic type. Much has been said about the different development of two OE nouns cradol and sadol (MnE cradle and saddle) - their phonetic structure beginning with the stressed vowel was exactly the same, and yet in one of them lengthening took place (cradle), whereas in the other the vowel remains short (saddle). But diachronic phonology cannot aim at an explanation of every single detail in the history of a language. No science devoted to dynamic processes can fruitfully base itself upon the philosophy of absolute determinism. Within the broad outlines of a process, which can and must be established by diachronic phonology, there is room for individual fluctuation which may be unaccountable without detracting from the explanatory prowess of this branch of linguistics. This consideration also refers to the problem of vowel length in ME words of French origin. Why were the stressed vowels long in some of them, but short in others? Since no rule can be found that governed vowel length in these ME words, attempts have been made to ascribe the distribution to Old French, where vowel length is thus presumed.29 But it does not follow that because it (the vowel) was long in OF, it would also have been long in ME; languages do not willingly adopt alien phonemes, however close their contact, but instead assimilate, wherever possible, an adopted word to native models.30

It so happened that the influx of French borrowings took place at a period when vowels were being divided between abrupt and non-abrupt phonemes, with allophonic 29 A. J. Bliss, "Vowel quantity in Middle English borrowings from Anglo-Norman", Archivum linguisticum, IV. 2 (1952) and V. 1 (1953); and "Quantity in Old French and Middle English", Archivum linguisticum, VII. 2 (1955); and A. S. Liberman, "On the history of Middle English ä and a", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXVII. 1 (Helsinki, 1966): 70-71. 30 E. J. Dobson, "Middle English lengthening in open syllables", Transactions of the Philological Society (Oxford, 1963): 145.

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59

variation in words and forms with open syllables. The new arrivals took part in the process together with native words, and their individual destinies have proved to be just as unaccountable as could be expected in those circumstances. The period of redistribution and alternation lasted two centuries after the establishment of the opposition of abruptness. It came to an end when the unstressed final vowel was dropped altogether. Reduction of unstressed vowels was undoubtedly connected with phonological processes in vowels and consonants and must be discussed here. But the whole process of reduction cannot be examined in the present book. First, the'causal connections of reduction go much deeper into the past than the beginning of the English language. Secondly, these connections are no doubt extremely ramified and stretch out far beyond the boundaries of the phonological system, deep into the other tiers of language. Reduction was primarily a syntagmatic process, and in such processes causal connections are necessarily deep and ramified much more than in paradigmatic processes, which are usually confined to one tier. The process of reduction consisted of several stages, each of which can be described as a separate process. Only the two last stages belong to the history of English proper. The OE subsystem of unstressed vowels consisted of only three distinct phonemes /a/, /e ~ i/, /o ~ u/ (Smirnitskij, 1946, 86). They served to distinguish inflexions. Generally speaking, many languages use only three vowels to support a rich inflexional morphology (Modern Icelandic is one). Therefore the reduction of the vocalism from more than 20 phonemes in stressed syllables to only three phonemes in unstressed syllables did not in itself prove the poverty of the unstressed vocalism in OE. But a closer examination shows that the three vowels were not utilized to the full. In the singular no noun or adjective had all the three vowels in its inflexions, even two vowels were rare (/u/ and /e/ in feminine nouns of the short o-stem; /u/ and /a/ in the few nouns of the w-stem; /e/ and /a/ in feminine and neuter weak nouns). In the singular of nouns mostly one vowel was present in the inflexions - /e/ in the strong declensions, /a/ in the weak declension. In verbal inflexions /a/ and /o/ appeared only before consonants. The distinction of different vowels within the paradigm of a word was thus rare in OE. This no doubt favoured the qualitative reduction of unstressed vowels in Late OE, for different forms of the same word had been distinguished by the presence or absence of such vowels rather than their quality. After this stage of reduction the presence or absence of the unstressed vowel /a/ became the main phonetic means of inflexion. It was certainly of little efficiency from the grammatical point of view. But the unstressed vowel had a great phonetic importance: without its presence in at least some forms of a word the functioning of the consonantal opposition of tenseness would have been impossible in OE. Indeed, the intervocalic position so vital for the distinction of consonantal tenseness could be created only with the help of unstressed vowels. Complete reduction of

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unstressed vowels, was therefore impossible until the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the system of phonemic oppositions was restructured, as it would have impaired the functioning of both oppositions of tenseness. After the restructuring, however, the unstressed vowel lost its importance. The new consonantal opposition of fused tenseness did not need the intervocalic position for its distinction. The new vocalic opposition of abruptness was distinguished in closed syllables; the presence of the unstressed vowel made the stressed syllable open and thus hampered the realization of this opposition, because it made its position of neutralization more frequent. Thus complete reduction, which could not be accomplished before the eleventh and twelfth centuries, became possible after the twelfth century. Complete reduction of the unstressed vowel /a/ took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It turned most of the basic wordstock of English into permanent monosyllables with the syllable closed. The frequency of the position of neutralization for vocalic abruptness fell significantly, and the opposition thus increased its functional load. Allophonic variation of vowel length in words and forms with alternating open and closed syllables was now stopped. The vowel in such words was to become permanently and definitely abrupt or non-abrupt. The processes of vowel 'lengthening' and 'shortening', so characteristic of the ME vocalism, were over by the end of the fourteenth century. Certain fluctuations in vowel length could be observed afterwards, but now they were phonemic, not allophonic; this made them visible and led to their reflection in writing. Scholars have noticed an increase in cases of shortening etymologically long vowels in closed syllables from the fifteenth century (Hackmann, 1908, 189; Dobson, 1963: 125). The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be described as the period in which the newly-established vocalic opposition of abruptness acquired the distribution which corresponded to its nature. The two parts of this process were the division of all stressed vowels into abrupt and non-abrupt (with corresponding 'lengthening' or 'shortening') and the fall of the unstressed vowel /a/. The two linked processes went through a stage of allophonic variation and fluctuation, which occupied most of the period, and came to an end by the beginning of the fifteenth century (Dobson, 1963: 142-44; Liberman, 1965b: 12). The number of non-abrupt phonemes in ME was not six as inherited from Late OE (see p. 53), but seven. The new phoneme was /a:/. Its source and time of emergence have been discussed, and two opinions have been expressed. The phoneme was believed to have resulted from the phonemicization of allophones of /a/ in open syllables after the fall of /a/ in the fourteenth century (Trnka, 1946: 164-65; Vachek 1959, 448; Dobson, 1963: 145). It was then shown that /a:/ had appeared already in the thirteenth century in French borrowings (Liberman, 1965a: 130-132; 1966: 71). It is perhaps more important to explain the circumstances that led to the creation of a 'hole' in the system of vowel phonemes, which was eventually filled by the new

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61

phoneme /a:/ coming from both sources described above. The change in phonemic relations between 'long' and 'short' vowels by Early ME included transference of the marking from the former to the latter. Being unmarked now, the 'long' non-abrupt vowels could exceed their correlates numerically. There was a low abrupt vowel /a/ neutral to timbre, but it had no counterpart among the non-abrupt phonemes. Thus a 'hole in the pattern' existed already in the twelfth century for non-abrupt /a:/. French borrowings like pas 'pace' and cas 'case' could have been the first to fill it. To explain the fact that they acquired 'long' vowels in ME one need not go so far as to suggest length distinction in Old French (cf. Liberman 1966: 70-71). In the thirteenth century the vowel in those words could be either abrupt or non-abrupt. The pronunciation of vowels in Old French could hardly justify their interpretation as abrupt ones, and they were naturally taken to be non-abrupt. In general, whenever there is a choice between identification as a marked and unmarked member of an opposition, the actual choice of the former alternative must be explained, for the acquistion of marking is usually motivated, whereas the choice of the unmarked member does not have to be specifically explained. Applied to the length of vowels in French borrowings in ME, the thesis means that only the appearance of an abrupt vowel in them might have to be explained (whether an explanation can be found for every individual word is another question). The appearance of non-abrupt vowels in French borrowings was a natural result of their being unmarked. By the end of the fourteenth century the system of ME vowel phonemes had acquired the following structure: Abrupt vowels ι

u

e

ο

Non-abrupt vowels

2. Vocalization of certain consonants and the emergence of non-abrupt gliding phonemes The table above does not present the whole picture of the Late ME stressed vocalism, which also included new gliding vowels. They appeared as products of syntagmatic mergers between vowels and following semivowels /j w/. The latter were completely vocalized, producing together with the preceding vowel first biphonemic diphthongs, then monophonemic diphthongoids. The first stage of this process coincided chronologically with the period when new phonemic oppositions were established - fused tenseness in the consonantism, ab-

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ruptness in the vocalism, i.e., the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The appearance of the diphthongs was one of the effects of the establishment of abruptness as a vocalic opposition. It has been shown above (see p. 54) that the abruptness of a vowel affects the following consonant by making it longer and its onset sharper. But not all consonants can be lengthened equally easily, not all can have a sharp onset. The semivowels /j w/ were the only OE consonants without geminate correlates. In two modern Germanic languages where a vocalic opposition of abruptness is available abrupt vowels do not occur before certain consonants - /j v/ in German, /j w/ in Dutch. It can be inferred that semivowels like /j w/ are phonetically unfit for the contrast between the vowel and the following consonant which is so essential for the realization of vocalic abruptness. Consonants phonetically incapable of contrasting with the preceding vowel in the manner required by the opposition of abruptness were eventually eliminated from postvocalic position. In ME /j w/ were thus eliminated (other consonants followed them later). They were reinterpreted as vowels forming the second component of biphonemic diphthongs, whose first component was neutral to the opposition of abruptness. There were probably nine such diphthongs - /ei ei sei ou ou au iu eu su/. They were biphonemic until the fall of the final unstressed /a/, which made them permanently tautosyllabic and thus favoured their monophonemicization (Smirnitskij, 1946: 84-85; Vachek, 1959, 451-452). This stage in their evolution was accompanied by paradigmatic mergers between them, and only three diphthongoids entered the system of vowel phonemes - /ai au ou/. They naturally joined the subsystem of nonabrupt vowels. What was the phonological basis for this inclusion ? It can be discovered in the physical characteristics of non-abrupt vowels as compared to their abrupt counterparts. A common property of non-abrupt phonemes, vowels and consonants alike, is their "lower rate of discharge [of energy] within a longer interval" (Jakobson and Halle, 1962a, 486). The articulations of abrupt and non-abrupt vowels may be identical before they reach the peak, but after it the non-abrupt vowel will have a longer, gradual fading (von Essen, 1962, 592-595). The energy of the non-abrupt vowel is thus different at different stages in its articulation: in the beginning it has the same rate of discharge as its abrupt correlate, but towards the end the rate of discharge will slow down. An articulation consisting of two stages which are energetically different is no doubt a diphthongal articulation. The difference between the two stages cannot be small, for it is part of the complex distinctive feature of abruptness. Therefore abrupt vowels can also oppose non-abrupt vowels as monophthongal vs. diphthongal. Gliding in non-abrupt vowels will most naturally be directed upwards, i.e., they are usually narrowing (closing) diphthongoids, because the low energy discharge means that the articulation moves away from the vocalic optimum. This movement is reflected in narrow glides. Accordingly, the new diphthongs were easily integrated into the subsystem of non-abrupt vowels if they had a narrowing articulation. On

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63

the contrary, the diphthongs /eu iu/ together with /oi ui/ in French borrowings, which displayed little or no narrowing, found no room in the system of vowel phonemes and remained biphonemic long after the fourteenth century. Even nowadays their reflexes /ju/ and /oi/ are not quite integrated in the vocalic system. Altogether five abrupt and ten non-abrupt vowels made up the Late ME vocalism. The numerical difference between the two vocalic subsystems was quite natural, for the number of marked phonemes can be smaller than the number of their unmarked counterparts (Greenberg, 1966: 513). Some phonologists postulate that symmetry between two subsystems implies their numerical equality. This may be true in certain languages with poor vocalisms, but it does not apply to modern Germanic languages with numerous vowel phonemes. Simpler systems must be regarded as particular cases of complex systems, not vice versa. In complex systems numerical equality between subsystems is far from obligatory. There is no need to look for correlated pairs of phonemes in such systems. This is corroborated by the noteworthy fact that at the beginning of ME the nonabrupt vowels outnumbered the abrupt vowels by one phoneme only (six against five); by the end of ME the gap rose to five phonemes (ten against five) due to the appearance of /a: ai au ou/. Thus the ME vocalism never displayed a "tendency towards the restoration of symmetry" or towards eliminating "isolated" long vowels without short correlates. On the contrary, "asymmetry" and "isolation" of this kind even increased during the period. In MnE the numerical gap between the two subsystems is still greater, while paired correlation between their members is now an exception rather than the rule.31 3. The Great Vowel Shift What has been said above is an important argument in discussing the causes of the radical vowel change which began immediately after the Late ME vocalism took shape with the fall of the final unstressed /a/. The first phonological explanations of the Great Vowel Shift32 proceeded from the premise that the long high vowels /i: u:/ had no short correlates and, being "isolated" phonemes, were ultimately eliminated from the subsystem of long monophthongs, which tended towards "symmetry" with the short subsystem. The long high vowels were accordingly diphthongized, and their places were occupied by lower vowels moving up; the Shift is thus presented as a "drag-chain". It is, however, basically wrong to look for explanations of the Shift in any particular 'corner' of the vocalic system. Indeed, if symmetry was the goal, the easiest way to 31

Josef Vachek, "The phonematic status of Modern English long vowels and diphthongs: a handful of remarks on some new solutions of an old problem", Philologica Pragensia,Vl. 1 (1963): 68. 32 Bohumil Trnka, "Fonologickä poznämka k posunuti dlouhych samohläsek v pozdni stfedni anglictine'", Oasopis pro modern! filologii, XXIX (1946): 162-65; and "A phonemic aspect of the Great Vowel Shift", in Melanges Fernand Masse (Paris, 1959) pp. 440-43; and Martinet, 1955, 248-56.

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FEATURES

achieve it was to eliminate the highest vowels /i: u:/, to raise the high-mid vowels /e: o:/ to high, then raise the low-mid vowels /ε: o:/ a little, turning them into mid vowels; as for low /a:/, there was no reason to change it. In other words, it was sufficient to preserve only three degrees of raising instead of four in the 'long' vowels in order to achieve perfect symmetry with the 'short' vowels. It can be postulated that any impulse originating in one part of the system will have the strongest effect on that very part, but will inevitably weaken as it passes on to the remote parts of the system. It is significant that neither B. Trnka nor A. Martinet included the narrowing of /a:/ into their pictures of the Shift, though that particular change was obviously an integral part of the Shift33. The Great Vowel Shift can be explained only if it is treated as one process equally affecting all the 'long' (= non-abrupt) vowels. We should examine their relations with their counterparts in the system of vowel phonemes - the abrupt vowels, but not separately for pairs of, say, long high /i:/ and short high /i/. The whole of the subsystem of non-abrupt vowels should be taken as one of the two participants in the opposition of abruptness. The diphthongoid non-abrupt vowels should certainly be included into the subsystem under examination. The subsystem that underwent the Great Vowel Shift had the following structure:

ai

au a:

The monophthongs and the diphthongoids did not constitute two separate parts of the subsystem, as the apparent monophthongs were probably also diphthongized to an extent. "Sprachen mit Silbenschnittkorrelation besonders dazu neigen, die vollablaufenden Vokalphoneme als Bewegungsdiphthonge zu realisieren" (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 176, Anm. 1). "The completion of the articulation of the vowel is signalled by a concluding semivowel, i.e. a maximal narrowing on the contact boundary with the following consonant".34 Phonetic investigations by O. von Essen can help to explain the diphthongization of non-abrupt vowels by factors lying in the very nature of the opposition of abruptness (see p. 54). It has been shown that non-abrupt vowels are characterized by a lower rate of discharge of energy at the second stage of their articulation, after its peak. But this property of non-abrupt vowels creates a paradoxical situation. If the discharge of 33 Cf. V. Y. Plotkin, "O pricinah sdviga glasnyh v anglijskom jazyke", Ucenyje zapiski Karelskogo pedagogiceskogo instituta, IX (Petrozavodsk, 1960): 96-99. 34 I. P. Ivanova, "O vozmoznyh fonologiceskih i foneticeskih faktorah 'velikogo sdviga glasnyh' v anglijskom jazyke", in Seminar po diahroniceskoj fonologii germanskih jazykov. Tezisy dokladov (Moskva, 1966): 6.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

65

energy at the first stage of articulation is the same as that in abrupt vowels, which have practically no second stage, then the total discharge of energy is greater in nonabrupt vowels. But the total energy discharge of an unmarked vowel can hardly exceed that of a marked vowel. Therefore the first stage in the articulation of non-abrupt vowels should have a lower discharge of energy than abrupt vowels. It has been noted that short vowels usually have higher maximums than long vowels.35 Phonically this must lead to a narrower articulation of non-abrupt vowels. Thus non-abruptness can lead either to final narrowing or to overall narrowing. To sum up, the vocalic opposition of abruptness could be described as the opposition between short, monophthongal, lower vowels with sharper offglides, followed by longer consonants with sharper onsets, on the one hand (abrupt vowels), and long, narrower or narrowing vowels with smooth oflglides, followed by no consonant or short consonants with smooth onsets, on the other hand (non-abrupt vowels). All the phonic properties enumerated were parts of the complex distinctive feature of abruptness. The Great Vowel Shift took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, immediately after the fall of the final unstressed /a/, which was itself a result of the establishment of the opposition of abruptness. In its turn the fall of the unstressed vowel affected the realization of the opposition. On the whole the fall favoured the opposition, as it diminished the occurrence of its position of neutralization - open syllables. But it also made the postvocalic consonant final in many words. Length is harder to realize in final position than in intervocalic position; but the length of the consonant had been a component of the complex distinctive feature of abruptness. This probably led to an increase in the role of phonic features realized within the vowel itself - diphthongal articulation,36 narrowing in non-abrupt vowels. The Great Vowel Shift was a shift in these two directions, which in fact was one direction towards narrowing - partial or general. It was brought about by a change in the composition of the distinctive feature of abruptness. It was not a replacement of one distinctive feature by another. The complex structure of a distinctive feature is subject to change, because it includes a number of components interacting and sometimes conflicting with one another; it is by no means a harmonious combination with no internal collisions. The phonic components may join or leave the distinctive feature; their relative significance in it may rise or fall. This is what happened in the distinctive feature of abruptness in Late ME and Early MnE. It is understandable that the change in the distinctive feature affected the articulation of non-abrupt vowels, for unmarked phonemes are usually more pliable. Another factor in the Great Vowel Shift was the need to integrate the diphthongoids completely within the subsystem of non-abrupt vowel phonemes. 35

Eli Fischer-Jergensen, "Discussion of the paper by Otto von Essen" in Proceedings of the 4th international congress of phonetic sciences in Helsinki (The Hague, 1962) p. 595. 36 V. A. Kviatkovskij, "O peredvizenijah dolgih glasnyh v anglijskom jazyke", in Tezisy dokladov k naucno-metodiceskoj konferencii (Leningradskij politehnioeskij institut, 1965): 36-37.

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The two factors described here were of different importance in particular parts of the subsystem. For the high vowels no overall narrowing was possible, but they could be turned into narrowing diphthongoids by broadening their initial articulation. The resulting change /i: > ai, u: > au/ was, quite paradoxically, the only way to increase narrowing in the two narrowest vowels. The integration of the diphthongoids naturally affected the low and low-mid vowels. Two paradigmatic mergers took place - /a:/ and /ai/, /o:/ and /ou/ participated in the Shift as one phoneme each. Apart from the articulatory proximity of the monophthongs to the diphthongoids, the distributional properties of the merging phonemes were factors in the mergers. The typical position for the diphthongoids, which originated from combinations of vowels with semivowels, was final; few consonants (mostly /n I/) could follow them. The monophthongs, on the contrary, occurred primarily before various consonants; in final position /a:/was impossible, /o:/ rare. The mergers were thus not opposed by functional factors.37 The merger of /a:/ with /ai/, not /au/, and their subsequent evolution testify to the monophthong having been front, not back. By its origin, however, /a:/ had not been front (cf. Liberman, 1966:68). It had not participated in the opposition of timbre as the lowest vowel. As it was raised, it was to acquire one of the two timbres, but the choice was predetermined by the rule that the unmarked member of the opposition is usually chosen (see p. 61); the unmarked timbre is front. The front vowels /a: ε: e:/ and the back vowels /o: o:/ were narrowed and moved upwards in the subsystem. The diphthongoid /au/ occupied the place vacated by the narrowing of /o:/. The whole of the Great Vowel Shift can be represented in the following way:

e: > /:

o: > u:

ε: =- e: ai+a: > ε:

ou+z: > o: au ->· o:

i: > ai

u: > au

The products of the Shift, except in the bottom line, are presented as monophthongs. That, however, was probably not the case: they must have been diphthongal with /-glides for front, «-glides for back vowels. 4. The formation of the MnE vowel system After the Great Vowel Shift, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the English vowel system underwent new changes. Now they also involved the abrupt vowels. Another peculiarity of this period was the vocalization of more consonants. 37

V. Y. Plotkin, "Phonological statistics and diachronic phonology", Philologica Pragensia, VIII. 2-3, Miscellanea Trnka (1965): 284-85.

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67

The changes in the abrupt vowels weakened the realization of markings combined in one phoneme. The abrupt vowels /u o/ were marked members in the opposition of fused timbre. They now lost one component of the distinctive feature of timbre - lip-rounding, keeping only backness as a realization of the phonemic feature. Both vowels were also lowered, weakening or losing the distinctive feature of raising. The weakening of timbre and raising markings in two abrupt vowels was a manifestation of the structural law that regulates the markedness of individual phonemes, preventing them from combining too many markings, so that the presence of one marking in a phoneme might impede the acquisition or preservation of other markings.38 This regulation is manifest in other Germanic languages. Among the Dutch abrupt vowels there is no /u/, which would have combined the markings of abruptness, high raising, backness and lip-rounding; its would-be correlate /u:/, however, is present among the non-abrupt vowels. There is no /u/ among the Icelandic 'narrow' (abrupt?) vowels, though there is 'broad' /u/. The abrupt /i e/, unmarked in the timbre opposition, were not changed. The low abrupt /a/, previously neutral to timbre, was pushed to front timbre by the lowering of back /u o/ and became low front /at/. The subsystem of abrupt vowels thus became quadrangular, following the example of the non-abrupt subsystem after the Great Vowel Shift. Delabialization and lowering of /u o/, fronting of /a/ did not take place in contexts which favoured lip-rounding - near labial consonants. Some redistribution of allophones took place between phonemes. Round allophones of former /a/ joined the back vowel /o < o/ instead of fronting. Some allophones of former /u/ kept their lip-rounding and high raising and became the nucleus of the new phoneme /u/, which then attracted the shorter allophones of non-abrupt /u:/. Changes in the vocalism also involved the consonants /r l x/ - significantly the same consonants which had caused breaking in OE.39 As they had done in OE, they now caused a lowering and backing of the preceding vowel, also the formation of glides - s before /r/, u before /I x/. But now those assimilative properties of the three consonants were utilized in a different paradigmatic context and brought about different results; one is reminded that two of these consonants had acted in an analogous way in Gothic (see p. 21). It has been shown that the assimilative influence of these consonants is connected with their paradigmatic proximity to vowels and, accordingly, their weak integration in the consonantism. This characteristic of these consonants acquired special significance after the establishment of the opposition of abruptness. The realization of the opposition is favoured by clear contrast between the vowel and the consonant, ex38

R. Jakobson, "Implications of language universale for linguists", in Universals of language (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) p. 210. 39 E. Prokosch, A comparative Germanic grammar (Philadelphia, 1939) p. 114; and A. I. Smirnitskij, Istorija anglijskogo jazyka: srednij i novyj period (Moskva, 1965) p. 100, footnote 13.

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pressed in the sharp offglide of the former and the sharp onset of the latter. But syntagmatic contrast is impossible without clear paradigmatic contrast. This was why the semivowels /j w/, also the voiced velar fricative /γ/ were vocalized in postvocalic position in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the fifteenth century the second stage of vocalization began, involving now the sonants /r I/ and the voiceless velar fricative /x/. In all instances of vocalization the preceding vowel became non-abrupt. The process of vocalization was complicated in the cases of /!/ and /x/. Phonically it began with «-glides appearing between /a o/ and these consonants, /-glides between front vowels and /x/. The vowel with the glide then joined the corresponding nonabrupt narrowing vowel phoneme. The consonant /x/ was vocalized after all vowels, back and front, and its vocalization was in most cases complete; where it was not, the labial consonant /f/ superseded /x/ under the influence of the labial glide. Thus the vocalization of /x/ together with the earlier vocalization of /γ/ ended in the elimination of velar fricatives from the English consonantism. The vocalization of /!/ took place only after back vowels and was not regular even there. The vocalization of postvocalic /r/ was regular and knew no exceptions. The elimination of /r/ and /x/ from postvocalic positions completed the formation of a special distributional class among English consonants, whose members are paradigmatically closest to vowels, cannot participate in the realization of vocalic abruptness and are therefore non-occurrent in postvocalic position. They include the nonstop sonants /w r j/ and the consonant /h/. J. Vachek regards some of them as peripheral phonemes with no firm standing in the phonemic system, doomed to disappear from the language.40 But their recent integration into one distributional class no doubt strengthened their position in the phonemic system. As for the effect of the vocalization on the system of vowel phonemes it was different in the case of /I x/ on the one hand, /r/ on the other. The vocalization of the former two consonants produced no change in the system of vowel phonemes, except spreading certain non-abrupt vowels to words in which they had not occurred before. As usual in processes of phoneme redistribution, the results of vocalization were individual, subject to the influence of analogy or dialect competition (cf. SteblinKamenskij, 1966a: 72). The vocalization of /r/, on the contrary, introduced significant changes into the system of vowel phonemes. Already in Late ME the lowering and backing influence of /r/ had caused the change /e > a/ before it. But this was an instance of phoneme redistribution. In Early MnE the a-glide which had appeared before postvocalic /r/ merged with the preceding abrupt vowel, altering its raising and timbre, but above all depriving it of abruptness. Lowering and/or backing naturally affected the high and/or front vowels /e i u/ most strongly: they merged into one non-abrupt vowel /a:/, which is 40 Josef Vachek, "On peripheral phonemes of Modern English", Brno Studies in English, IV (1964).

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

69

neither high nor front. In the case of /of and /a/ the vocalization of /r/ resulted primarily in their loss of abruptness, as they had little frontness or high raising to lose. When the vocalization reached the stage where /r/ was lost completely, the vowels /a: o: a/ became new non-abrupt phonemes. The vowel /a:/ inherited the functional load of three sequences: /e+r/, /i+r/, /u+r/. The phoneme/o:/merged with/o: i:/, part of it was taken over by abrupt /e/, which is described as the sound change /e: > e/; in few cases (great, break, steak) the advancing phoneme /ε: > e: > ei/, replaced the phoneme destroyed by its advance (Jassem, 1953: 151). As could be expected in a case of phoneme redistribution, the corresponding sound changes were irregular, and the numerous attempts to explain the 'deviations' have proved of no avail. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a third class of non-abrupt vowels came into being - centring diphthongoids. The vocalization of /r/ after non-abrupt vowels did not involve the loss of the 9-glide, and it formed together with the preceding vowel biphonemic diphthongs and triphthongs. In the eighteenth century their monophonemicization began. The process is not finished yet, and its results are still to be regarded as potential. On the one hand, some centring diphthongoids merge with non-abrupt monophthongs: /oa >· 09 >· o:/, also /ua > 33 > o:/. Triphthongs are simplified: /aia > aa > a:/, /aua > aa >· as/. On the other hand, in Modern British English centring diphthongoids show signs of merging with narrowing nonabrupt vowels.42 Nevertheless, those mergers are not accomplished facts, and centring vowels should be treated as a separate class of non-abrupt vowels, opposed to narrowing diphthongoids on the one hand and to monophthongs on the other hand. The whole of the MnE stressed vocalism after the eighteenth century can be described as being based on three phonemic oppositions which developed during the second millennium A. D. (besides the oppositions of timbre and raising which always existed in English). The opposition of abruptness divides all the vowels into abrupt and nonabrupt phonemes. Within the latter there is an opposition of gliding, which divides them into diphthongoids and monophthongs. Finally, diphthongoids are divided by the third opposition into narrowing and centring (cf. Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 108-109). The creation of the latter opposition signified a further split in complex distinctive features. Just as the opposition of gliding separated phonic gliding from non-abruptness, enabling non-abrupt vowels to be non-gliding as well, the new opposition separated narrowing from gliding, making it possible for gliding vowels to be non-narrowing. All three oppositions used for their distinctive features the phonic properties which had originally been components of the complex distinctive feature of abruptness. In this sense the two younger oppositio ns, resulting from the vocalization of /r/, can be said to be affiliated to the parental opposition of abruptness. 42 Vachek, 1963: 68-70; and A. C. Gimson, "Phonetic change and the RP vowel system", in In honour of Daniel Jones (London, 1964) pp. 131-36.

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

71

The MnE vocalism can thus be presented as follows: Abrupt

Non-abrupt Gliding Narrowing Nonnarrowing (centring)

High i u Mid e ο Low χ Λ

ii itu ei ou ai au

Ϊ3 ea da

ua 33 c?3

Nongh'ding

9:

3: a:

Of great interest is the similarity in structural organization between this system and the OE vowel system in the seventh and eighth centuries (see p. 27). In both systems there is a phonemic distinction between gliding and non-gliding vowels, while the gliding vowels are further distinguished by the direction of their gliding. Both systems are rich in phonemes - at the peak of its extension the OE system included 24 vowels, the MnE system as pictured above has 21 members apart from two marginal phonemes /ju/ and /oi/, which have not been included. Of course, there is also an important difference between OE and MnE: in the former gliding was linked to timbre, in the latter it involves raising. In other words, gliding was horizontal in OE, but it is vertical in MnE. This, by the way, is reflected in the nature of isolated, marginal vowels: /ie/ was isolated in OE because it displayed vertical gliding, and /ju oi/ are isolated now because their gliding is horizontal - it is front-to-back in /ju/, back-to-front in /oi/. One point of similarity between OE and MnE is of special importance for the assessment of dynamic processes in diachronic phonology. In both vocalisms extension has reached its maximum, and both system are on the verge of impending simplification. Of course, we know that this really happened to the OE vowel system, whereas the destiny of the MnE system can only be prognosticated. But it is felt by many scholars that the system has entered a period of radical change. "Es hat den Anschein, da hiermit eine neue Periode einsetzt, die sich von der vorhergehenden ebenso abhebt wie diese von der mittelenglischen, eine Periode, in der wir uns gegenw rtig befinden".« The specific traits of the present stage in the history of English vowels explain the well-known difficulties of describing their system synchronically. These difficulties are quite comparable to those encountered in the description of the OE vowel system. It has been shown above that the peak in the extension of a phonemic system is almost immediately followed by a period of simplification. This moment is characterized by 43

Karl Luick, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, I-II (Leipzig, 1921) p. 550.

72

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

the emergence of ephemeral phonemes, which are eliminated almost as soon as they are born. Thus it cannot be determined whether a back-to-front low diphthongoid - the product of i-umlaut from /a/ - actually existed in OE; if it did, it must have disappeared very soon after its emergence. Some other OE vowels had a precarious existence. A similar situation is found in MnE, where some vowel phonemes, especially in the youngest class of centring diphthongoids, are not unanimously recognized as phonemes, because they merge with other phonemes so soon. D. SUMMARY

Having examined the dynamics of the phonemic oppositions, based on sonority and protensity features, in the course of the history of English, we can sum it up as a succession of several stages: 1. In the first centuries of the first millennium A. D. two related oppositions of tenseness were established in the pre-OE vocalism and consonantism. Both oppositions were based on protensity features: tense vowels and consonants were phonically long. Full extension of both oppositions was reached by the ninth or tenth centuries, when all vowels and almost all consonants participated in them and the distribution of tense and lax phonemes corresponded to the nature of both oppositions. 2. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries both oppositions underwent radical changes. The consonantal opposition of tenseness merged with the opposition of voice into a new opposition of fused tenseness. The vocalic opposition of tenseness was replaced by the opposition of abruptness. 3. Between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries the vocalic opposition of abruptness was developed. The development included bringing the distribution of abrupt and non-abrupt phonemes into line with the nature of the opposition. 4. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries two new vocalic oppositions closely linked to the opposition of abruptness came into being, distinguishing non-abrupt vowels by the presence or absence of gliding and its direction. After this, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the English vowel system reached a high degree of complexity and begins to show signs of impending radical changes. We are now in a position to summarize the main events in the history of the English phonological system, which may be described and explained in terms of certain dynamic processes. The first millennium A. D. was taken up by the process of extension and subsequent simplification in the subsystem of phonemic oppositions based on tone features timbre oppositions in vowels, localization oppositions in consonants. After the end of the process few sound changes affected these oppositions; the only development involving vocalic timbre after the twelfth century was perhaps the delabialization and fronting of certain abrupt vowels. In the first millennium A.D. the subsystem of phonemic oppositions based on sonority

SONORITY AND PROTENSITY FEATURES

73

and protensity features was also extended - oppositions of tenseness developed in vowels and consonants. But the most active period of change in this subsystem of oppositions was the second millennium A. D., occupied by the establishment and development of the opposition of vocalic abruptness, then two other oppositions affiliated to it. The last change in consonantal oppositions was the replacement of the two oppositions of tenseness and voice by the opposition of fused tenseness on the border between OE and ME. In general, phonological changes in the system of English consonants seem to have been only parts of dynamic processes whose main arena was the vowel system. This is another confirmation of the thesis that diachronic phonology must reject the atomistic approach to changes in the phonological system, just as it has rejected the atomistic approach to sound changes. It has become a truism that a sound does not change all by itself, it changes within a changing system of phonemes. But a change in the system of phonemes in its turn appears to be part of a large-scale phonological process, which represents a SYSTEM of phonological changes.44 A sound change finds its explanation on the phonemic level; similarly, a phonemic change can be explained by developments in the system of phonemic oppositions. In short, sound changes are manifestations of changes in the system of phonemes; the latter are manifestations of changes in the system of oppositions.

44 Pavel Trost, "K pf icinam jazykovych zmen", in Ο vedeckem ροζηάηί soudobych jazyku (Praha, 1958) p. 78; and Martinet, 1965b: 16.

Ill ON FUNCTIONAL FACTORS IN THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

A. THE CONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH PHONETIC WORDS

Besides the smallest phonological units diachronic phonology is to study larger units - the syllable, the phonetic word. Little attention, however, has so far been devoted to the history of these units. K. Luick planned as the second part of his Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache "eine Geschichte der höheren phonetischen Gebilde" (Luick, 1921, 95), but he did not live to write it. An investigation of the history of larger phonological units, apart from its own value, will be useful as a clue to many problems in the dynamics of the systems of phonemes and phonemic oppositions. The construction of syllables and words is the function of phonemes, just as the construction of phonemes is the function of phonemic oppositions. On the other hand, larger phonological units are parts of the sound tier directly connected with other tiers; for instance, phonetic words are intimately connected with the vocabulary. Therefore a functional description of the phonological system is impossible without studying the way in which phonetic words are constructed. Of special interest for Germanic phonology is a unit which is at the same time a syllable and a phonetic word - the monosyllable. In the present chapter the functional connections between phonology and grammar will not be dealt with - only the links with the vocabulary will be studied. In order to dissociate ourselves from any morphological problems, only monosyllables with no morpheme boundaries in them are taken. In other words, the object of our analysis is the monosyllabic stem so typical of Germanic languages.1 1. The primaries The canonic shape of the Germanic monosyllable is CVC; its three components (primaries) are called onset, peak and coda (Hockett, 1955, 52). The marginal prima1

Cf. Fischer-Jergensen, 1952: 15; and Bent Nordhjem, The phonemes of English: an experiment in structural phonemics (Copenhagen, 1960) p. 19; and Bohumil Trnka, A phonological analysis of present-day Standard English, revised edition (Tokyo, 1966) p. 61.

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

75

ries are dispensable and consist of single consonant phonemes or of clusters. The peak is indispensable and is usually monophonemic. a. Onsets The original Germanic onsets were as follows: (1) 18 simple (monophonemic) onsets - p t k k" b d g f Q s χ χ" w j m n l r; (2) 30 clusters of noise with sonant pr tr kr br dr gr fr pi kl bl gl fl tw dw kn bn gn fn

Qr xr wr ΘΙ xl wl si Qw sw xn sn sm

(3) three clusters of fricative with stop - sp si sk; (4) three clusters of fricative with stop and sonant - spr sir skr. Altogether there were 54 onsets - 18 of them simple, 36 clusters. The OE inventory differed only slightly.2 One simple onset became a cluster: the labiovelar phoneme /k u / had split into /k + w/. On the contrary, the cluster sk became monophonemic s; also skr =* sr. The boundary between simple onsets and clusters is in some points uncertain.3 One new simple onset k', later tS appeared. Two rare clusters had been eliminated: ΘΙ had been replaced by more common β, cf. Gothicpliuhan and OEfleon 'to flee'; this destroyed the only onset with /!/ after an apical consonant. The cluster bn found in only one Gothic word bnauan had also disappeared. Thus there were 53 onsets in OE, 19 of them simple. Certain changes took place in the inventory between OE and MnE. Four new simple onsets appeared -vdzdz. Three of them came in borrowings, but fitted well in the pattern of English onsets, where almost all consonant phonemes can be found. Four new clusters appeared with initial /s/ - sk and skr filled the gap after sk =- s; spl and skw were developments after the existing pattern. Some changes were caused by the change in the phonemic status of /w/ and /h/. It can be seen that /w/ had a double nature in Germanic clusters: it behaved as a sonant in tw dw sw θ\ν, as a noise consonant in wr wl. The former use was strengthened by the addition of kw skw, whereas the latter was abolished. This can be taken as evidence of /w/ being integrated among sonants. The use of /h/ as a noise consonant in clusters was also given up. The number of onsets with /n/ was reduced. After bn another cluster with a labial -fn - disappeared (cf. OEfneosan and MnE sneeze). By Early MnE only three clusters 2

Cf. Herbert Pilch, Altenglische Grammatik (M nchen, 1970) pp. 66-67. Cf. Hans Vogt, "The structure of the Norwegian monosyllables", Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap XII (Oslo, 1942): 14; and Pilch, 1970, 67. 3

76

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

with /n/ had survived - gn kn sn. But the former two, which were the only clusters combining two stops, were eliminated. This brought /n/ into line with the other nasal sonant /m/: both occur now only after /s/. The MnE inventory of onsets can be presented as follows: (1) 22 simple onsets -ptkbdgfBssvdztsdzmnlwrjh; (2) 22 clusters of noise with sonant pr tr kr br dr gr fr 6r sr pi kl bl gl fl si tw kw dw Qw sw sn sm

(3) three clusters of fricative with stop - sp st sk; (4) five clusters of fricative with stop and sonant - spl spr sir skw skr. Altogether we find in MnE 52 onsets, 22 of them simple. The inventory of onsets can thus be said to have remained practically unchanged from the quantitative viewpoint during the 20 centuries between Germanic and MnE. Of course, exact calculations of this kind face certain difficulties. "On sait qu'en pratique il est souvent difficile de distinguer entre ce qui n'existe pas et ce qui ne saurait exister" (Kurylowicz, 1960, 196). The way to overcome the difficulties is to analyse the structural patterns, not only the actual clusters occurring in the vocabulary.4 Thus *tl *dl *ΘΙ are structurally inadmissible in MnE, as only labial and velar consonants combine with /!/ in clusters (besides /s/, which forms a special distributional class). But ski, which is not found in monosyllabic stems, fully corresponds to the pattern in (4) and must be regarded as an accidental gap (cf. FischerJ0rgensen, 1952, 34-38), or a virtual cluster (Vogt, 1954, 33). Another virtual cluster of the same type is stw. But in English the numerical difference between actual and virtual clusters is comparatively small. We should be safe to estimate the inventory of onsets (virtual onsets included) at about 60. Another difficulty is connected with the boundary between the onset and the peak if a semivowel is present on it. For MnE the problem concerns the place of [j] after consonants. If no consonant precedes this sound, it is obviously an independent simple onset. But after consonants it is inseparably bound to the vowel [u:]; in rare foreignisms where other vowels follow it is allophonically varied with [i] - e.g. piano [pjjenou ~ piasnou], fjord [fjo:d ~ fiord] (cf. Hockett, 1959a, 87). Therefore [j] between a consonant and [u:] should be regarded as part of the peak, not the onset.5 Another argument is that the inclusion of [j] into the onset would demand the creation of numerous structural patterns specially for [j]: /m n l v h/ are never followed by any consonant except [j]. 4 5

Haas Vogt, "Phoneme classes and phoneme classification", Word, X. 1 (1954): 31. Cf. Antonie Cohen, The phonemes of English (The Hague, 1965) pp. 56-58.

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

77

b. Peaks The inventory of peaks has always been rich in the history of English. In Early OE it included more than 20 vowel phonemes. In ME it was somewhat poorer, as only eleven phonemes survived by the beginning of the period. But soon no fewer than nine diphthongs emerged due to the vocalization of /w j/. That again brought the number of peaks to 20. By the end of ME, before the Great Vowel Shift, there were 15 vowel phonemes and four biphonemic diphthongs /iu eu oi ui/ - altogether 19 peaks. In MnE the number of peaks again exceeds 20. Thus the English language at all stages in its history has about 20 peaks. Numerical stability is found in the inventory of onsets as well. There, however, it could be explained by the absence of radical changes in the consonant system, affecting consonants in initial position, throughout the whole history of the language. Phonemic relations have been changed, a few consonant phonemes were created anew and established in initial position; but these changes, significant in themselves, left the inventory of onsets largely the same. This certainly does not apply to the inventory of peaks. The fifteen centuries of the history of English are full of radical changes in the vowel system, following one another closely. That the numerical stability of the inventory of peaks has always been preserved regardless of the changes is hardly accidental. The fact must be explained by the diachronic phonology of English. c. Codas The inventory of codas in ancient Germanic languages was rich and varied. The very concept of coda is not quite adequate for Germanic, for the consonantal margin of the stem was seldom a syllabic coda. When uninflected forms were rare, the postvocalic consonants of the stem - all or some of them - belonged to the next syllable. The consonants ending the stem were therefore extremely varied, representing in fact combinations of syllabic codas with syllabic onsets. The successive stages of reduction, increasing the frequency of uninflected forms, led to the identification of the syllabic boundary with the morphemic boundary, and of the syllabic coda with the consonantal margin of the stem. The consonant clusters appeared more often in final position, which puts strict limitations upon their composition. One of the consequences of this change was the differentiation of consonant groups consisting of noise consonants with sonants (TR-type) and sonants with noise consonants (RT-type). When an inflexion followed both groups could end the stem. But with the increasing predominance of uninflected forms an important difference between them became apparent. RT-groups became codas in monosyllabic stems quite easily; TR-groups made the stem disyllabic. In the latter case a vowel developed between T and R - cf. Gothic taikns, OE täcn ~ tacen, MnE token.

78

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

Another solution was the vocalization of T (which was possible if it was a velar fricative); the stem could then remain monosyllabic, cf. Gothic tagr, Northumbrian txher, West Saxon tear; OE regn, MnE rain. In both cases TR-groups ceased to exist. They are not included into our investigation. The most frequent pattern of final cluster in OE was the RT-type. It was represented by 27 codas (cf. Pilch, 1970, 68-72): rp rt Ip It mp nt

rk' rk Ik' Ik nk' nk mb

rd ry Id Ιγ nd ng' ng

if If

r6

rs Is

rx Ix

Clusters of two noise consonants were not numerous. Among them there were five clusters of fricatives with stops - sp si skft xt. In two clusters of noise consonants with /s/ the opposition between stops and fricatives was neutralized - ks/xs, ps/fs. Contamination between these two subtypes was frequent - cf. OE wlisp > wlips, but wxps ~ wxfs > wxsp; ascian > acslan ~ ahsian, but sex => xsc. Clusters of three consonants (sonant + fricative + stop) were possible - rsk rst rxt. But they were hardly independent codas, for the sonant in them was subject to metathesis ifyrhtu >fryhtu. More than 30 consonant phonemes could be used as simple codas. Altogether about 70 codas were thus possible in OE. Changes in the inventory have been more considerable than in the onsets. Two new simple codas -srj- have appeared by mutual assimilation within clusters, though in the case of η -= ng doubts have been expressed as to its monophonemicization (Vachek, 1964, 191-205). But on the whole the number of simple codas has fallen due to the loss of gemination and the vocalization of /w j r χ/. MnE uses 19 simple codas -p tktsb d g d z f Q s sv d z mny I. The vocalization of /r/ destroyed all clusters with it. Inner assimilation eliminated ng mb. In the remaining codas of sonants with noise consonants new clusters grew somewhat due to simplification of suffixal derivatives (e.g., health), fall of unstressed vowel (e.g., month < moneth) and influx of borrowings. There are now 22 clusters of this type: It Ik Its Ib Id Idz If nt nk nts nd ndz mp mt Ip

W ηθ

Is Iv ns nz ms

Four codas of fricatives with stops are found - sp st skft. Two new codas of two stops have appeared - kt pt, and three codas of stops with fricatives - ks ps dz. Altogether there are 9 codas of two noise consonants. Besides, there are a few clusters of three consonants - the most frequent of them are kst yks, appearing, however, only in two words each (next, text', minx, lynx). With them the MnE inventory of codas reaches 52 units.

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

79

Precise calculations are even more difficult in codas than in onsets because of many cases of virtual and marginal codas. Instances are Ikt in mulct, dz in adze. If they are included we can estimate the number of codas at about 60. Thus it is smaller by roughly 10 units than it was in OE. 2. Relations between primaries The three inventories together construct one of the final products of the sound tier - phonetic shapes for monosyllabic stems. The relations between the primaries involve their boundaries. The boundary between onset and peak has been stable. The boundary between peak and coda, on the contrary, is diachronically unstable and moves in one direction only - towards the end of the stem. This movement was manifest in the vocalization of consonants, which increased the number of peaks and diminished the number of codas. Thus the vocalization of /r/ added several new phonemes to the inventory of peaks; but it cost the inventory of codas about a dozen units. Is the balance favourable for the phonological system? The number of primaries is in itself of little importance; what really matters is the number of their combinations - the constructional potential, which is, roughly speaking, represented by the product of multiplication of the three inventories. As the number of peaks is about 20 and the number of codas about 60, the increase in the product due to the addition of a new peak is three times the increase due to the addition of a new coda. Therefore the growth of the inventory of peaks is profitable even if it cuts the inventory of codas. It can be maintained that throughout the history of English the inventories of primaries were either kept at the same level or changed so as not to lower the number of their combinations. The other aspect of the relation between the primaries is their combinability. The first combination - that of onsets and peaks - shows the independence of onsets. The corresponding boundary is stable, combinability across it is practically unlimited (cf. Fischer-J0rgensen, 1952, 36). There is only one limitation of this kind in MnE: peaks beginning with j (of which there are two - ju jus) are inadmissible after the onsets w r j s tS dz and all the clusters with sonants - altogether after 33 onsets. In accordance with the dichotomous structure of the syllable expressed in the formula i+(V+f) (Kurytowicz, 1960, 18 and 213; cf. Hockett, 1955, 150), connections between peak and coda are much more intimate. Their mutual combinability is subject to limitations, primarily in connection with tenseness in OE vowels and abruptness in ME and MnE vowels. In MnE only non-abrupt vowels can serve as peaks with no coda following. Only abrupt vowels are peaks before 19 clusters and η which is distributionally still a cluster. 32 codas, including the remaining 18 simple codas and 14 clusters, combine with peaks regardless of the abruptness or nonabruptness of the vowel. The freely combining clusters are those which consist of /!/ with /t d s/ (e.g., bolt, field, false), /n/ with /t d s ts dz/ (e.g. pint, wound, dance,

80

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

launch, lounge), fricatives with stops (e.g. grasp, first, craft, ask), stops with fricatives (e.g., traipse, coax). Of all MnE codas more than 30 combine with all peaks, 20 - only with abrupt peaks. It must be stressed that rules of combinability should not be determined separately for each pair of peak with coda, for this would mean the substitution of such rules by lists of actually found combinations, which are far from being representative.6 Combinability rules are of interest if they apply to whole classes of primaries. For instance, all abrupt vowels constitute one class of peaks with rules applying to all of them, though /u/, being the least frequent among them, is not actually found before many codas combining freely with other peaks of this class. 3. The constructional potential and its realization The question how many monosyllabic stems are phonetically possible in English was asked and answered long ago. H. Spencer estimated the number at 108,264', O. Jespersen raised it to 158 thousand (Jespersen, 1933, 390). But the inflected forms were also counted by them. B. Trnka put the number of monosyllabic stems at 89,165 (Trnka, 1966, 112). But the figure is too high. The fact is that B. Trnka increased the inventories of onsets and codas by counting among onsets 17 clusters with [j] and among codas - the phoneme /z/ and the clusters Is ns besides Its nts, though they are merely variants of the same clusters (Trnka, 1966,43-44). Secondly, he counted the potential without subtracting the inadmissible combinations of peaks with codas. As a result, his potential stock of shapes must contain numerous items like *smjauz, which are hardly English. Let us make calculations using our data. Full combination of 60 onsets, 20 peaks and 60 codas would produce 72,000 shapes. We must subtract about 1,200 combinations with the peakju (30 onsets with which it does not combine by 40 codas with which it can combine), and above all 18,000 combinations with 15 non-abrupt peaks before about 20 codas inadmissible after them. Altogether about 20,000 shapes fall out, leaving the constructional potential at the level of approximately 50 thousand monosyllabic stems.8 It might be noted that the Norwegian potential of monosyllables is put at 40 to 50 thousand (Vogt, 1942:28). There is no need to make elaborate calculations for OE. As the inventories of primaries did not change radically, the OE constructional potential could hardly 6 Fischer-J0rgensen, 1952,1: 33-38; and O. Jespersen, "Monosyllabism in English", in his Linguistica: selected papers in English, French and German (Copenhagen, 1933) pp. 393-94. 7 Herbert Spencer, An autobiography, I (London, 1904) p. 528. 8 Cf. V. Y. Plotkin, "Kolicestvennyj aspekt foneticeskogo modelirovanija slovarnyh jedinic v sovremennyh germanskih jazykah", in Strukturno-tipologiceskoje opisanije sovremennyh germanskih jazykov (Moskva, 1966) p. 275; and "Foneticeskoje strojenije odnosloznoj kornevoj morfemy v sovremennyh germanskih jazykah", in Germanskije jazyki (Novosibirsk, 1967) p. 11.

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

81

differ greatly from that of MnE. In any case there must have been from 40 to 60 thousand phonetic shapes for monosyllabic stems throughout the history of English. A small part of this vast potential is actually used in the vocabulary - not more than several thousand. B. Trnka lists 3,203 monosyllabic stems in MnE (Trnka, 1966, 111). My list compiled from the Concise Oxford Dictionary includes 3,537 items. Thus only about 7 per cent of the potential is materialized in the vocabulary. The same ratio can be observed in other Germanic languages; it must have been true of OE as well. Of course, vacillations of one or two per cent either way cannot alter the picture.

B. QUANTITATIVE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE LEXICAL AND PHONIC TIERS IN THE MACROSYSTEM OF LANGUAGE

1. On the relationship between the constructional potential and its realization The problem of the relationship between the actual and theoretically possible number of words has been discussed in linguistics (cf. Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 239-241; Hockett, 1959a, 288-290). But concrete data are still insufficient for its solution. To the best of my knowledge, only one attempt has been made to investigate and explain the difference between a phonetic potential and its realization. It was established that Arabic uses 3,775 verbal roots of three consonants; combinability rules were also described for these consonants.9 Applying the rules, G. Herdan calculated the phonetic potential and found it to be 6,332 roots; consequently, 60 per cent of it is realized.10 Later he corrected his calculations and brought the potential up to 9,038 roots, while its realization fell to 2,605 roots, i.e., 29 per cent.11 What is most interesting is not the figure but the question asked by G. Herdan, "why are there 3775 verbal roots in Arabic?", and his formulation of the aim of the investigation, which was "to watch the language at work, i.e. the work of word formation which gave the 3775 verbal roots as its result" (Herdan, 1962, 51). The answer to the question is: "Only such admissible combinations for which the Arab tongue and ear had a preference materialized as root morphemes" (Herdan, 1962, 55). But such answers will certainly fail to satisfy linguists, who want to know what guides the speakers in their preferences and who know that unused combinations are not necessarily worse than those used. The question about the difference between the potential and its realization should be divided into two separate questions. The first question - why is not the whole 9

Joseph H. Greenberg, "The patterning of root morphemes in Semitic", Word, VI. 2 (1950): 162-81. 10 Gustav Herdan, The calculus of linguistic observations ('s-Gravenhage, 1962) p. 54. 11 Gustav Herdan, Quantitative linguistics (London, 1964) pp. 169-70.

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potential used? - can be answered at once: the full utilization of the potential would mean the complete absence of redundancy in phonetic words, which is obviously impossible in human languages. The other question is not so easy to answer. Why is so little of the potential actually used? Redundancy in human languages is about 50 per cent12; why then should it exceed 90 per cent in English monosyllabic stems? The existence of a gap between the numbers of stems phonetically possible and actually used is thus quite natural; what has to be explained is the size of the gap. Can the gap be narrowed? It would certainly make the language more economical in the utilization of its phonetic resources. A Utopian idea has been discussed about a language called Ing, i.e., English with increased monosyllabism, where the most important stems would be accommodated within 15 thousand monosyllabic shapes (Hockett, 1959a, 293). One might say that there is nothing Utopian in the idea - only a third of the potential of such shapes would be sufficient, and redundancy would still be above 50 per cent. But in the long history of English there have been no signs of ever narrowing the gap. One can be quite sure that the realization of the potential has never risen above ten per cent. If the gap is to be narrowed, there are, theoretically speaking, two ways to do this: either lowering the potential by cutting the inventories of primaries, or raising its realization by increasing the number of monosyllabic stems in the vocabulary. It has been shown above that no considerable reduction ever took place in the inventories of onsets, peaks and codas. On the contrary, those inventories, especially the most important inventory of peaks, have been kept at the same level, and every simplification of the vowel system was almost immediately followed by a period of extension. On the other hand, the history of English has no evidence of a noticeable increase in stems of the CVC-type, despite the favourable conditions created by the influx of Scandinavian and French borrowings. That influx was offset by the loss of probably as many stems as were gained. The growth of monosyllabism has been caused by the extension of uninflected forms rather than by the creation or arrival of new stems. The number of monosyllabic stems can grow through the monomorphemicization of derivatives (e.g., health), the fall of unstressed vowels (e.g., moneth =- month). But those developments cannot narrow the gap between the potential and its realization, because the potential is also increased by them. Monomorphemicization of health, wealth, stealth, filth created four new monosyllabic stems, but it also created the new coda ΙΘ; the fall of the unstressed vowel in month created the new coda ηθ, also found in the borrowed plinth. Altogether 6 new monosyllabic stems appeared; but two new codas increased the potential by about 600 shapes. Abbreviation seems to be promising many new monosyllabic stems, as it has become very productive in MnE. But it has turned out that abbreviation is also 12

Charles F. Hockett, "The problem of universale in language", in Universals of language (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) p. 19.

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

83

unable to change the realization of the potential substantially. A recent investigation13 found in MnE 1,329 monosyllabic products of abbreviation. One might take this as a substantial addition to the existing stock of about 3,500. But in reality only 153 abbreviations filled phonetic shapes hitherto unused; the rest became homonyms to existing words. One is led to the conclusion that the wide gap between the phonetic potential and its realization is a constant feature of the English language. Does this mean that English belongs to languages which Trubetzkoy called "verschwenderische" (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 240)? Since 'wastefulness' has its positive features, it might be supposed that English preserves this quality. What are the advantages of 'wastefulness', i.e., low utilization of the phonetic potential ? Trubetzkoy says that "wasteful" languages distinguish words by many phonological means. In other words, the combinatory space is sparsely filled with many "uninhabited shapes" in it (Hockett, 1959a, 289), words are phonetically distant from one another, homophony and quasi-homophony are rare. But then English is obviously not a 'wasteful' language - it is closer to languages described as follows: "In den 'sparsamen' [Sprachen] sind Wörter, die sich voneinander nur durch ein einziges Phonem unterscheiden, sehr zahlreich" (Trubetzkoy, 1939a, 240). As could be expected in a "sparing" language, homophony is widespread in English. New words (e.g., abbreviations) face difficulties in finding unused shapes, which at first sight are so abundant, and increase homophony in occupied shapes. The same language can evidently not be 'wasteful' and 'sparing' simultaneously. These two notions have to be defined more precisely. How much of the potential is actually used in the two kinds of languages? Phonology today knows as little about it as it did in the thirties, when Trubetzkoy first put the question. Hockett defined English as a 'wasteful' language in comparison with Chinese, which is taken as a paragon of 'sparing'. Indeed, about 80 per cent of the possible monosyllables (about 1,300 out of 1,700) are found in the Chinese vocabulary. But it must be remembered that modern Chinese uses disyllables as lexical units. Therefore it would be more correct to consider the potential of disyllables and its realization. The number of phonetically possible disyllables certainly runs into millions, while its realization, though it cannot be measured precisely, is no more than a small fraction of this tremendous potential. But then Chinese is far from 'sparing', and English is not 'wasteful' by comparison. On the whole, the quantitative relationship between the lexical and phonic tiers of language deserves attention. It can be presumed that the relationship is essential for the dynamics of systems in both tiers. It has been established beyond doubt that functional factors originating in the lexical and grammatical tiers have a deep influence on the dynamics of phonological 13 M. M. Segal, Abbreviacija i abbreviatury v sovremennom anglijskom Jazyke, Dissertacija (Leningradskij pedagogi&skij institut, 1964) pp. 247-49.

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systems. The functional load of an individual phoneme or of a phonemic opposition is a decisive factor in its evolution. But these are limited influences, affecting one phoneme or several phonemes. We should go further and investigate global interactions between tiers. "Especially promising are investigations aimed at discovering dynamic relationships between different tiers in the hierarchy of language."14 The function of the phonemic system as a whole is not the distinction of any given pair of words, but the distinction of all words in the vocabulary. Is this accomplished easily? Can the phonemic system meet every demand of the vocabulary without straining its resources? The fact that only seven per cent of the potential of monosyllabic stems are actually used, which leaves a margin 13 times wider, seems to prompt a positive answer. The margin is more than sufficient for any addition to the stock of monosyllabic stems. In reality, however, its utilization seems to be blocked at the level of seven per cent, and the filling of unused shapes encounters serious obstacles. Tens of thousands of phonetic shapes exist which apparently cannot be used in the vocabulary. But a rich phonemic system is kept in the economy of English for the express purpose of constructing the highest possible number of phonetic shapes. The only conclusion is that the 90 odd per cent margin between the potential and its realization is a necessary margin of safety; but what makes it necessary is not clear. Anyway, it can be presumed that the English language needs about 50 thousand monosyllabic shapes if it is to provide its vocabulary with about 3,500 monosyllabic stems. The phonemic system of English must therefore have enough vowels and consonants to construct 50 thousand shapes of the CVC-type, more than 90 per cent of which seem to be wasted. The number of phonemes necessary for this purpose will in its turn determine the number of phonemic oppositions in the system. To sum up, the lexical tier as a whole must be provided with a certain number of phonetic shapes; they are the final product of the phonemic system, which meets the demand by reaching dimensions sufficient to produce the necessary number of shapes, including a very wide margin of safety. 2. A mathematical model for the realization of the constructional potential A mathematical model was worked out for the process of constructing phonetic shapes of the CVC-type and their lexical utilization. There are three inventories of 60 onsets (i), 20 peaks (v), 60 codas (f). Sequences ii/are built out of primaries taken at random from the respective inventory. Each primary ik, vn or/m has its probability of choice^, pvn oipfm; two primaries in one inventory cannot have the same probability. Within the inventories the primaries are arranged according to their probabilities, beginning with the highest. The probability 11

M. A. CeTknsskij,Tjurkskijvokalizmisingarmonizm: (Moskva, 1965) p. 4.

opyt istoriko-tipologiceskogo issledovanija

FUNCTIONAL FACTORS

85 Pi I

of a primary is inversely proportional to its number in the inventory: plk = —j-. fc The sum of the probabilities of primaries within one inventory is 1. The chosen primaries are left in the inventory, so that probabilities are unchanged. The choice of one sequence ivf is called a step. The number of steps made (N) is equal to the number of sequences chosen. We are interested, however, only in those sequences which have not been chosen in previous steps. New sequences, differing in at least one primary from the sequences chosen before, are called constructed sequences. The number of sequences constructed in N steps is M. The probability of the given sequence ik vnfm being chosen in any one step ispik ·ρνη -pfm; the probability of its not being chosen is 1 —pik ·ρνη -pfm', the probability of its not being chosen in any of Ν steps is (1 —pik ·ρνη •/'/m)JV; finally, the probability of its being chosen in at least one of Ν steps, i.e., of its being constructed in Ν steps, is 1 — (1 —pilc ·ρνη -Pfrnf. The number Μ of all sequences ivf constructed in Ν steps is the sum of these latter probabilities for all sequences ivf: k, m = 60

M= "Σ

k, n, m = l

{l-(l-Pik-P,n:PfJN}

With increasing W the number of M grows and with N =