Palatalization and assibilation of /k/ in English and Scottish place-names

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Laker
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
External Influence ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Place Names ◽  
East Midlands ◽  
Early English

Abstract There are very few place-names with initial Ch- [tʃ-] in Scotland, Northern England and much of the East Midlands. Names that do exist are almost exclusively late formations and usually consist of French rather than Old English place-name elements. This article investigates the reasons why assibilation is either present or absent from specific areas and why. The results lead to a reassessment of several points, including: (1) the phonetic and phonological development of the voiceless velar in Early English in particular environments; (2) the extent to which external influence counteracted palatalization and assibilation in some areas; (3) the disparities between the place-name and dialectal evidence.

Tamar, Widowhood, and the Old English Prose Translation of Genesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
pp. 586-617
Author(s):  
A. Joseph McMullen ◽  
Chelsea Shields-Más
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Early English

AbstractRecently, more attention has been paid to the conscious translation efforts that produced the Old English Hexateuch/Heptateuch, examining how a number of revisions must be analyzed as an effort to control readerly interpretation. This study contributes to that discussion by considering the translation of Genesis 38, which greatly changes the biblical narrative by removing Tamar’s second marriage and any rationale for the death of her first husband. Previously, this omission has been read as a way to streamline the story or avoid unsavory (sexual) topics. We argue, instead, for another, concurrent possibility: to revise the text in light of pre-Conquest views on widowhood. The turn of the millennium saw early English widows gain much more attention in various legal and ecclesiastical sources. These sources, we believe, speak to the concerns of the translator in some of the alterations found in the chapter (including forced remarriage, multiple marriages, the amount of time in between marriages, and the Levirate custom as an institution).

The legend is born: early Greek, Latin, and insular versions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Dresvina
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Katherine Group ◽  
Old English Martyrology

Chapter 1 is dedicated to the early distribution of the relics of St Margaret/Marina, the early versions of her passio (Greek, Latin, and Old English), and their interrelations. It also discusses the proper names and the place names found in her legend: of Margaret/Marina herself and its conflation with Pelagia, of her father Theodosius, the evil prefect Olibrius, her executioner Malchus, a matron Sinclitica, the supposed author Theotimus, the dragon Rufus, and of Pisidian Antioch. It then examines the three extant Old English versions of St Margaret’s life from the ninth to the early twelfth century: the Old English Martyrology, the Cotton Tiberius version, and the Corpus Christi life. The chapter proceeds with a discussion of the Anglo-Norman poem about the saint by Wace, an overview of Margaret’s early cult in England, and concludes with a study of the life of St Margaret from the Katherine Group.

Language of The Southern Highlanders

PMLA ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1302-1322
Author(s):  
Josiah Combs
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
West Virginia ◽  
Old English ◽  
British Isles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Shenandoah Valley ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Early English ◽  
North And South

The region inhabited by the Southern Highlanders has been called the Southern Mountains, Appalachian America, Elizabethan America, Shakespearian America, and so on. Its inhabitants have been referred to as “our contemporary ancestors.” The language of these people has been labeled Old English, Early English, Elizabethan English, Scottish, Irish, Scotch-Irish. Roughly speaking, the region extends from Maryland to northern Alabama, including parts of Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Its area is about that of the British Isles, and its population around five millions. Our study can not therefore be complete or exhaustive. The investigation is made more difficult by the fact that the highlander's language varies in different sections of the highlands, and frequently even in the same community. In West Virginia and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia numerous Scottish survivals are found; further south they are not common. Thus one meets with different types of dialect in the novels of Charles Egbert Craddock, for Tennessee, Will N. Harben, for Georgia, John Fox, Jr., for Kentucky and Virginia, and Lucy Furman, for Kentucky. The language of Percy McKaye's plays is in no way similar to that of any section of the Southern highlands. The linguistic peculiarities noted in this study have been picked up here and there over the highland section during the past twenty years; as a high-lander from Kentucky, I had heard many of them myself from childhood.

Homorganic Cluster Lengthening, Pre-Cluster Shortening and Preference-based change in Early English

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
William W. Kruger
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Vowel Lengthening ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
Early English

Abstract This paper discusses the processes of Homorganic Cluster Lengthening (HCL) and Pre-Cluster Shortening (PCS) occurring in the late Old English and Early Middle English periods. These processes are responsible, respectively, for vowel-lengthening before voiced homorganic consonant clusters (OE bindan, feld, hund > LOE/EME bīnd, fēld, hūnd) and vowel shortening before other clusters (OE cēpte, fīfta, brōhte > ME kepte, fifte, brohte). This paper builds on reassessments of data by Minkova (2014) to contribute an account of HCL within the system of “preference laws” articulated by Vennemann (1988). This account attributes the motivation for HCL to preferences for syllable-internal transitions between nucleus and coda in order to explain the fine details of HCL; namely, the fact that HCL applies with higher frequency to high vowels followed nasals than to low/mid vowels and in a sporadic manner to front vowels followed by /l/ compared to back vowels. These differences are attributed to the application of the Coda and Nucleus Laws (Vennemann 1988: 25, 42), with additional proposals about the effect of velarization of /l/ in Old English, with comparison to PCS providing important context throughout.

Conditions for the voicing of Old English fricatives, II: morphology and syllable structure

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Fulk
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Personal Names

Old English fricatives at points of morpheme juncture are studied to determine whether they conform to the rule of voicing between voiced sounds that applies morpheme-internally. Should we expect a voiced or a voiceless fricative in words like OE heorð-weorod, Wulfweard, and stīðlīce? The evidence examined regards chiefly compounds and quasi-compounds (the latter comprising both forms bearing clear derivational affixes and ‘obscured’ compounds, those in which the deuterotheme has lost its lexical independence), though a small amount of evidence in regard to voicing before inflectional suffixes is considered. Evidence is derived from place-names, personal names, and common nouns, on the basis of Modern English standard pronunciation, assimilatory changes in Old English, modern dialect forms, post-Conquest and nonstandard Old English spellings, and analogous conditioning for the loss of OE /x/. A considerable preponderance of the evidence indicates that in compounds as well as in quasi-compounds, fricatives were voiced at the end of the prototheme when a voiced sound followed, but not a voiceless one. It follows from the evidence that there was no general devoicing of fricatives in syllable-final position in Old English, despite Anglo-Saxon scribes' use of <h> for etymological [Γ] in occasional spellings like <fuhlas> and <ahnian>. Old English spellings of this kind need be taken to imply nothing more than a tendency for <h> and <g> to be used interchangeably in noninitial positions, due to the noncontrastive distribution of the sounds they represent everywhere except morpheme-initially. Rare early Middle English spellings of this kind may or may not have a phonological basis, but they cannot plausibly be taken to evidence a phonological process affecting /v, ð, z/.

The earliest modern Anglo-Saxon grammar: Sir Henry Spelman, Abraham Wheelock and William Retchford

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 379-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English History ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Early English ◽  
First Time

AbstractThe first scholars interested in Anglo-Saxon had to learn it by direct contact with original sources. Work on a dictionary preceded that on a grammar, notably through the efforts of John Joscelyn, Archbishop Parker's Latin Secretary. Like Parker, Sir Henry Spelman (1563/4–1641) found that many of his sources for early English history were in Anglo-Saxon. Consequently he encouraged the study of Old English by establishing a Lectureship in Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge University and worked closely with its first (and only) holder, Abraham Wheelock. Together with Wheelock's pupil, William Retchford, and possibly drawing on some earlier work by Joscelyn (since lost), these scholars attempted to formulate the rudiments of Anglo-Saxon grammar. This pioneering work, basically a parts-of-speech grammar, survives in three versions, two of them incomplete. In this article I discuss the contents and methodology used and present for the first time an edited text of the first modern Old English grammar. It was a remarkable achievement.

OLD ENGLISH RŌT IN PLACE-NAMES

1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-129
Author(s):  
CAROLE HOUGH
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Place Names
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