Vowel breaking
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Historical sound change |
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General |
Metathesis |
Dissimilation |
Fortition |
Lenition (weakening) |
Sonorization (voicing) |
Spirantization (assibilation) |
Rhotacism |
Debuccalization (loss of place) |
Elision (loss) |
Apheresis (initial) |
Syncope (medial) |
Apocope (final) |
Haplology (similar syllables) |
Fusion |
Cluster reduction |
Compensatory lengthening |
Epenthesis (addition) |
Anaptyxis (vowel) |
Excrescence (consonant) |
Prosthesis (initial) |
Paragoge (final) |
Unpacking |
Vowel breaking |
Assimilation |
Coarticulation |
Palatalization (before front vowels) |
Labialization (before rounded vowels) |
Final devoicing (before silence) |
Vowel harmony |
Consonant harmony |
Cheshirisation (trace remains) |
Nasalization |
Tonogenesis |
Floating tone |
Sandhi (boundary change) |
Crasis (contraction) |
Liaison, linking R |
Consonant mutation |
Tone sandhi |
Hiatus |
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.
Contents |
[edit] Breaking in Southern American English
This is characteristic of the "Southern drawl" of Southern American English, where the short front vowels have developed a glide up to [j], and then in some areas back down to schwa: pat [pæjət], pet [pɛjət], pit [pɪjət].
[edit] Breaking in Old English
Proto-Germanic stressed short e, a becomes eo, ea regularly in Old English when followed by h or by r, l + another consonant. Examples are:
- PG *fallan > feallan "fall"
- PG *erþō > eorþe "earth"
[edit] Breaking in Old Norse
Proto-Germanic stressed short e becomes ja or (before u) jǫ regularly in Old Norse except after w, r, l. Examples are:
- PG *ek "I" > (east) ON jak, Swedish jag, Danish jeg (but Jutlandic æ, a, Icelandic ek > ég, Norwegian eg)
- PG *hertō "heart" > ON hjarta, Swedish hjarta, Danish hjerte
- PG *erþuz "earth" > ON jǫrð, Swedish, Danish jord
According to some scholars,[1] the diphthongisation of e is an unconditioned sound change, whereas other scholars speak about epenthesis[2] or umlaut.[3]
[edit] Breaking in Proto-Indo-European
Some scholars[4] believe that PIE i, u has a kind of breaking before an original laryngeal in Greek, Armenian and Tocharian, whereas the other Indo-European languages have monophthongs. Typical examples are:
- PIE *gʷih3wos > *gʷioHwos "alive" > Gk. ζωός, Toch. B śāw-, śāy- (but Skt. jīvá-, Lat. vīvus)
- PIE *protih3kʷom > *protioHkʷom "front side" > Gk. πρόσωπον "face", Toch. B pratsāko "breast" (but Skt. prátīka-)
- PIE *duh2ros > *duaHros "long" > Gk. δηρός, Arm. *twār > erkar (Skt. dūrá-, Lat. dūrus).
However, the hypothesis is not adopted by most handbooks.
[edit] Notes
- ^ J. Svensson, Diftongering med palatalt förslag i de nordiska språken, Lund 1944.
- ^ H. Paul, "Zur Geschichte des germanischen Vocalismus", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Kultur 6 (1879) 16-30.
- ^ K. M. Nielsen, Acta Philologica Scandinavica 24 (1957) 33-45.
- ^ F. Normier, in: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 91 (1977) 171-218; J.S. Klein, in: Die Laryngaltheorie und die Rekonstruktion des indogermanischen Laut- und Formensystems, Heidelberg 1988, 257-279; J.E. Rasmussen, in: Selected Papers on Indo-European Linguistics, Copenhagen 1999, 442-458.