The Monophthongisation of Diphthongs Before Dorsal Fricatives: A Corpus Study

• Authors: Jerzy Wełna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper discusses the geographical distribution of the monophthongisation of (1) the diphthong [ei] (< [e:ç]) before the palatal fricative [ç] (i.e. [eiç > i:ç]) and (2) the diphthong [ou] (< [o:×]) before the velar fricative [×] (i.e. [oux > u:x] in words like high an bough. The resulting monophthongs became the input to the diphthongisation rule, a part of the Great Vowel Shift. On the basis of forty-nine Middle English poetic texts from the Chadwyck-Healey online corpus an effort is made here to establish temporal and dialectal conditioning of the change.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3-16

Dates

published

2009-01-01

online

2010-01-08

Contributors

author

Jerzy Wełna

• University of Warsaw

References

• Bauer, Gero - Dieter Kastovsky (eds.) 1988 Luick revisited. Tübingen: Gunter Narr
• Brunner, Karl 1963 An outline of Middle English grammar. (Translated by G. K. W. Johnston.) Oxford: Blackwell.
• Chadwyck-Healey 1992 English poetry full-text database. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.
• Jones, Charles 1989 A history of English phonology. London: Longman.
• Jordan, Richard [1925] 1974 Handbook of Middle English grammar: Phonology. (Translated and revised by E. J. Crook.) The Hague: Mouton.
• Luick, Karl 1940 Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Leipzig: Tauchnitz.
• Lutz, Angelika 2004 "The first push: A prelude to the Great Vowel Shift", Anglia 122: 209-224.
• Wełna, Jerzy 1988 "Historische Grammatik and the Middle English diphthongal systems", in: Bauer, Giro - Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), 419-433.
• Wełna, Jerzy 2004 "Middle English ē-raising: A prelude to the Great Vowel Shift", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 40: 75-83.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10121-009-0013-6