Talk:Phonological history of Old English

No chronological order of the sound change laws?
I haven’t seen one.  Sky 6t  10:32, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Why did the first vowel in faran/faren not become a front vowel?
Under the section on a-restoration, it says that due to Anglo-Frisian brightening, Germanic *faraną would become *faræną in the Anglo-Frisian phase. Of course, from the sections on Anglo-Frisian brightening, we can see that 'ą'was unaffected because it was nasalized, and though the 2nd vowel is followed by 'n', since it's a short unstressed vowel it would still be fronted. But what they never explain is why the 1st vowel was never fronted. The rules of brightening would make one expect that, as 'r' did not blocking the fronting of 'a'.

So why didn't the first vowel become a front vowel? --Beneficii (talk) 22:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

According to Ringe 2014, strong verb class VI shows back /ɑ/ all throughout its forms due to leveling of the æ-ɑ alteration. Not a very satisfying answer unfortunately, but he points out that the third-person singular forms (færð in this case) also point to -early- leveling of /ɑ/, since the æ could only have gotten there by way of umlaut of /ɑ/, which would not ordinarily have been there (*fariþ > *færiþ > *feriþ > *ferþ; instead we have *fariþ > *færiþ !> back to fariþ > færiþ > færþ). 98.177.178.250 (talk) 20:34, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

In the article it says that West Germanic /a/ was raised to /æ/ in Old English except before nasal. But according to Joseph Wright (An Elementary Grammar of Old English) /a/ was raised only in closed monosyllables or in bisyllabic words with open root syllable and a front vowel or syllabic liquid or nasal in the following syllable. I could not find any information on medial /a/ being fronted. According to this view (same in Martin Lehnert "Altenglisches Elementarbuch") the form faran is regulary developed. 2A0A:A547:A1D:0:A94C:B459:6545:71D2 (talk) 02:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Same with twā (didn't become twǣ) Muonium777 (talk) 14:42, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Inconsistency
In the dialect comparison table, there seems to be an inconsistency in describing Anglian developments from the post-Anglo-Frisian-Brightening period. 75.80.147.161 (talk) 18:20, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

i > e and o > a in weak verbs
In the class I weak verb endings we see -id > -ed, -iþ > eþ, etc. This isn't explained in this article as far as I can tell, and it should be. On this, says: "one finds the normal reduction of unstressed vowels to /e/".

I'd like to add a new subsection "Reduction to e" in the "Phonological processes" section and a new entry in the "Summary of vowel developments" to document this. I'm no scholar of Old English, so here's my request for comment before I make changes. Vivalande (talk) 01:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I realized that that class II weak verb endings have an other transformation in the present -os > -ast, oþ > aþ. That same book says "*/o/ either remained or was lowered to /a/". No particular explanation is provided. Each of these transformations don't seem to be the result of a general rule. But they happened in a very heavily used part of the language. So now I think the best course is to add a new subsection "Vowel changes in verb suffixes" in the "Phonological processes" section which describes these changes. Vivalande (talk) 23:32, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


 * The subsection "Unstressed vowel reduction" explains unstressed o > a. It also addresses unstressed /æ/, /e/, /i/ > /e/. Cynemund (talk) 20:19, 2 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Ah I see. Sorry, apparently I didn't watch this page correctly so I didn't get a notification that you'd responded. Thanks for the clarification! Vivalande (talk) 01:50, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

io in Early West Saxon
Having carefully examined the writings of Alfred, I've concluded that he did not distinguish io from eo (nor īo from ēo). He did use both eo and io spellings, but apparently in free variation; they do not seem to correspond to etymology in any way. For example, he writes freond despite this word being *friund in Proto–West Germanic, and gesion despite this being from *gasehwan. With the verb bēon he seems to alternate freely between beon and bion, both in the infinitive and in inflected forms such as beoð/bioð. All this suggests Alfred did not know or care when one should write eo and when one should write io — meaning that these diphthongs had already merged in EWS, at least by Alfred's time. I have updated the article to reflect this (mentions of this diphthong merger occurring in "Late West Saxon" or "late Old English" now saying e.g. "Early West Saxon" or "Early West Saxon and late Anglian"). furrykef (Talk at me) 02:07, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Adding summaries of phonological rules


I find it a bit challenging to navigate this page as it is, a quick summary of each rule would help me. I've found Phonological_rule which describes a format for these rules. I'd like to contribute summaries of each phonological process like the summary of First a-fronting I've added to this section. I'm not sure if this format is often used in historical linguistics, so I'd like feedback on this before I go and write out all the rules. Vivalande (talk) 07:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I should add: the Summary of vowel developments section is great, but it doesn't summarize the context in which a change happens, which this would add. Vivalande (talk) 07:14, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Voicing of intervocalic fricatives, and devoicing of word-final fricatives
Why is there no discussion of the voicing of fricatives in between vowels/vowels and resonants? It's the source of such alternations as hoof/hooves, (original f>v between vowels) breath/breathe, all the voiced s's (choose, freeze, rise, etc.). similarly, final devoicing explains such alternations as leaf/leaves and calf/ calves (originally voiced bilabial fric. in either inflection). When did these sound change(s) occur? 74.207.129.53 (talk) 20:53, 26 June 2023 (UTC)