UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Syllable Cut, Moras, and Quantity Change in Dutch
by
Rachel Jocelyn Klippenstein
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
CALGARY, ALBERTA
AUGUST, 2006
Rachel Jocelyn Klippenstein 2006
Abstract
Most research on the prosodic phenomenon of syllable cut to date has been restricted to
German. Syllable cut has also failed thus far to receive an adequate account within moraic theory, which has led some syllable cut theorists (e.g., Vennemann 1994) to reject moraic theory in favour of alternate prosodic theories. This thesis provides a moraic account of syllable cut based on mora-sharing along the lines of Broselow et al.
1997, thus rendering alternate theories unnecessary. It also shows that syllable cut is present in Dutch, and argues that the quantity changes of Middle Dutch represent a transition from a quantity system to a syllable cut system as proposed for German and
English by Vennemann (2000) and Murray (2000, in press).
iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people who have been important in various ways to the completion of my Master’s degree and thesis.
First I would like to thank my supervisor, Robert Murray. In addition to his knowledge of the field, he proved to be very good both at instilling calmness and confidence whenever I was nervous about my thesis or its progress, and at prompting me to make progress on my work in a timely fashion—all excellent qualities in a supervisor, and the more so in combination. Working with him has been a very pleasant experience.
I would also like to thank Darin Howe and Amanda Pounder for their willingness to be on my thesis committee, and Suzanne Curtin for being the neutral chair at my defense. Thanks also to the other linguistics professors that I have learnt from here at the
University of Calgary, whether through courses I took from them, or through their willingness to answer the sometimes rather random questions I brought to their offices.
I also appreciate the amiableness of my fellow graduate students and of the members of the undergraduate linguistics club Verbatim, and would like to thank them all for their role in making the department a pleasant place to work. I would especially like to thank Corey Telfer among the graduate students and Scott Moisik among the Verbatim members for many hours of stimulating linguistic (and non-linguistic) discussion. Thanks also to the executive of Verbatim for welcoming me into the club office and even going so far as to let me have a key, thus giving me easy access at all hours both to the department library housed there, and to the couch which is in my opinion the most comfortable spot in the department.
iv I would also like to thank Linda Toth, the department secretary, for the
indispensable work she does in keeping everything running smoothly.
Many thanks to my family for their help and support in everything, and especially
for encouraging me along in the wonderful adventure of lifelong learning. Thanks to Dad
in particular for his part in starting me off in this field of study: for having the right books
in the bookcase to spark an interest in historical linguistics and the Germanic languages,
and for encouraging me to recognize when I started university that linguistics was the field where I belonged, and not to be daunted by technical-sounding descriptions of upper-level courses.
Thanks to all my friends for helping me keep sane during the thesis-writing process by providing necessary breaks, diversions, and human contact. Thanks in particular to Heather Ramsay for brightening so many of my evenings with her friendship, and to Matt Root for putting up with my thesis-related gripings and grumblings and helping me keep it all in perspective (‘It’s not your dissertation’).
Funding for this work from various sources deserves acknowledgement. Thanks to Robert Murray for providing me with research assistant funding from his grant #410–
2001–1597 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada also provided me with a
Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s award, #766–2004–0620. The Government of
Alberta provided me with a Province of Alberta Graduate Scholarship and an Alberta
Government Graduate Scholarship.
And finally, thanks be to God, on whom everything else rests.
v Table of Contents
Approval Page ...... ii
Abstract...... iii
Acknowledgements ...... iv
Table of Contents ...... vi
List of Abbreviations, Constraints, and Symbols...... x
Chapter One: Introduction...... 1
1. Overview ...... 2
1.1 Chapter one...... 2
1.2 Chapter two ...... 2
1.3 Chapter three ...... 2
1.4 Chapter four...... 3
1.5 Chapter five ...... 3
1.6 Chapter six...... 3
Chapter Two: Syllable cut and quantity...... 5
0. Introduction ...... 5
1. Quantity...... 5
2. Syllable cut...... 6
2.1 Phonetic properties ...... 7
2.2 Phonological properties...... 12
2.3 Syllable cut and schwa...... 16
2.4 History of syllable cut theory...... 18
vi Chapter Three: The representation of syllable cut ...... 20
0. Introduction ...... 20
1. The problem of moraic representation of syllable cut...... 20
1.1 The elements of moraic theory...... 20
1.2 Moraic theory and syllable cut: unsuccessful accounts ...... 23
2. Nonmoraic systems of representation ...... 25
2.1 Becker’s syllable with implosion position...... 26
2.2 Vennemann’s Nuclear Phonology ...... 26
3. A new mora-sharing analysis of syllable cut...... 28
3.1 Requirements for a moraic representation of syllable cut...... 29
3.2 Mora-sharing and phonetic duration: Broselow et al. 1997 ...... 30
3.3 A mora-sharing analysis of syllable cut: surface representations ...... 36
3.4 Mora-sharing and underlying representations...... 41
3.5 Syllable cut, mora-sharing, and schwa ...... 48
4. Summary ...... 49
Chapter Four: Syllable cut in Modern Dutch...... 51
0. Introduction ...... 51
1. Syllable cut in Dutch: full vowels...... 51
1.1 Phonetic properties ...... 51
1.2 Phonological properties...... 53
vii 2. Previous analyses of the Dutch vowel system...... 58
2.1 Early syllable cut analyses and related proposals...... 58
2.2 Quantity-based analyses...... 62
2.3 Quality-based analyses...... 65
3. Schwa and syllable cut in Dutch...... 67
3.1 Phonotactics...... 68
3.2 Morphology ...... 70
3.3 Accounting for schwa ...... 71
4. Syllable cut and fricative voicing...... 74
5. The vowel system of Dutch ...... 75
6. Summary ...... 76
Chapter Five: Quantity change and syllable cut...... 77
0. Introduction ...... 77
1. Quantity changes in German and English ...... 77
2. Quantity changes as a transition to syllable cut ...... 82
3. The representation of quantity changes...... 89
4. Summary ...... 101
Chapter Six: Quantity changes and syllable cut in Middle Dutch...... 102
0. Introduction ...... 102
1. Quantity changes and syllable cut in Middle Dutch...... 103
2. Fricatives, their history, and syllable cut...... 106
viii 3. Dating the Middle Dutch quantity changes...... 108
3.1 The attestation of Old Dutch...... 109
3.2 Dating OSL...... 110
3.3 Orthographic evidence for the date of OSL ...... 111
3.4 Metrical evidence for the date of OSL...... 118
3.5 Evidence for the date of OSL from rhyme...... 122
3.6 Other sound changes as evidence for OSL...... 123
3.7 The date of OSL: combining the evidence ...... 128
3.8 Dating degemination...... 129
3.9 The relative date of OSL and degemination...... 134
4. Summary ...... 134
Chapter Seven: Conclusion ...... 136
References...... 138
ix List of Abbreviations, Constraints, and Symbols
Abbreviations C consonant cor coronal CSS Closed Syllable Shortening eMDu early Middle Dutch FEM feminine GEN genitive H heavy syllable HCL Homorganic Cluster Lengthening L light syllable MDu Middle Dutch ME Middle English NDu Modern (‘New’) Dutch NHG Modern (‘New’) High German obstr obstruent ODu Old Dutch OE Old English OHG Old High German OS Old Saxon OSL Open Syllable Lengthening OT Optimality Theory PL plural PA. PART. past participle TSS Trisyllabic Shortening V vowel
x Constraints DEPLINK-MORA states that an association between a segment and a mora must not be created (from Morén 2001:27–28) MAXLINK-MORA states that an association between a segment and a mora must not be deleted (from Morén 2001:27–28) MORAICCODA states that coda consonants must be linked to moras (from Broselow et al. 1997:64) NOCMORA states that ‘the head of a mora must be a vowel’ (Broselow et al. 1997:65) NOSHAREDMORA states that ‘moras should be linked to single segments’ (Broselow et al. 1997:65) W-BY-P states that a coda consonant must be associated with its own mora
Symbols long vowel/consonant over a vowel: long vowel ˘ over a vowel: short vowel ˆ over a vowel: smoothly cut syllable over a vowel and a consonant: abruptly cut syllable . syllable break; if placed under a consonant, indicates ambisyllabicity ´ over a vowel: stressed syllable [ ] phonetic representation / / phonological representation < > orthographic representation > becomes (in historical derivations) < crescendo (in Nuclear Phonology representations) > decrescendo (in Nuclear Phonology representations) syllable μ mora
xi 1
Chapter One: Introduction
Different languages organize their prosodic systems in different ways. Among the options available to languages are quantity systems, in which short vowels contrast with long vowels and single consonants contrast with geminates. Another option is a syllable cut system, where abruptly cut syllables requiring codas contrast with smoothly cut syllables permitting but not requiring codas. Prosodic systems, like other aspects of living languages, are not static; as languages change, they may shift from one kind of prosodic system to another. While West Germanic and Old High German had quantity systems, Modern German is a syllable cut language; Vennemann (2000) shows how the
Middle German quantity changes represent this transition.
Syllable cut and by extension the transition from quantity to syllable cut have thus far proven difficult to represent adequately within moraic theory and related conventional theories of syllable-level prosody; this has led linguists working on syllable cut to develop alternative systems of representation. I develop a new analysis of syllable cut within moraic theory which successfully accounts for the properties of syllable cut and thereby can represent the transition from quantity to syllable cut without resorting to alternative prosodic theories.
I show that Modern Dutch, like Modern German, is a syllable cut language, which implies that it too underwent a transition from the quantity system of West
Germanic to the syllable cut system it now has. I argue that the Middle Dutch quantity changes show the same hallmarks of a transition from quantity to syllable cut that are found in Middle High German and Middle English. I investigate the sources of evidence for dating the Middle Dutch changes, and outline the kinds of evidence that can be
2
extracted from orthography, metre, rhyme, and other sound changes, including the
information they can and cannot provide.
1. Overview
1.1 Chapter one
This chapter provides an introduction and overview of the thesis.
1.2 Chapter two
In chapter two I present the phenomenon of syllable cut, a type of prosodic system
found in German and other languages, and explain how it is different from quantity. I
discuss the phonetic properties of syllable cut, including vowel length and tenseness as well as the distribution of intensity (Spiekermann 2002). I also discuss the phonological
properties of syllable cut, including the fact that smoothly cut open syllables are light,
and that abruptly cut syllables must be closed. The chapter concludes with a brief
overview of the history of syllable cut.
1.3 Chapter three
In chapter three I discuss the issue of how syllable cut is to be represented—a question
which currently has no agreed-upon solution—and propose a new analysis of syllable
cut within moraic theory. After introducing moraic theory and reviewing the problems
attending former moraic theory accounts of syllable cut, I review other systems of
representation that have been proposed for syllable cut. I finally propose a moraic
system of representation based on mora-sharing along the lines of Broselow et al.
(1997), and show how this can account for the facts of syllable cut.
3
1.4 Chapter four
In chapter four, I argue that Dutch is a syllable cut language, since it shows the distinctive phonological properties of syllable cut: first, syllables with abrupt cut (‘short vowels’) must be closed, and second, open syllables with smooth cut (‘long vowels’) are light. In addition, the patterning of schwa with phonetically long vowels can be explained in a syllable cut analysis but not in a quantity analysis. I also discuss prior analyses of Dutch, including early syllable cut analyses, quantity analyses, and quality analyses.
1.5 Chapter five
In chapter five I discuss the quantity changes that took place in the West Germanic languages, focusing on German and English. These changes have been argued by
Vennemann (2000) and Murray (2000, in press) to be the results of a transition from a quantity system to a syllable cut system. I discuss how the transition from quantity to syllable cut is to be analyzed within my moraic analysis of syllable cut.
1.6 Chapter six
In chapter six I discuss the quantity changes in Middle Dutch. I show that their similarities to the changes in Middle High German and Middle English involve the same properties that make a mora-counting analysis of quantity changes problematic, so that the Dutch quantity changes are also best accounted for by a transition to syllable cut. I investigate the possible sources of evidence for dating Open Syllable Lengthening and Degemination, the two major aspects of the loss of quantity. I discuss the potential of evidence from orthography, metre, rhyme, and other sound changes, outlining what
4 might be found in each category and the implications it would have for attempts to date the sound changes in question; the dating, however remains inconclusive.
5
Chapter Two: Syllable cut and quantity
0. Introduction
Different languages organize their prosodic systems in different ways. Two different
types of prosodic system at approximately the level of the syllable are the widely- known quantity systems and the less widely-known syllable cut systems. In this chapter
I discuss how syllable cut systems differ from quantity systems and what diagnostics can be used to determine whether a language has a syllable cut system or a quantity system. I also give a brief overview of the history of the concept of syllable cut.
1. Quantity
Some very well-known prosodic phenomena at the level of the syllable or lower are those known as quantity. Quantity phenomena are those that distinguish consonants and/or vowels on the basis of length; thus, they are segment-level prosodic distinctions.
A classical quantity language such as Latin or Finnish displays quantity contrasts in both vowels and consonants: long vowels stand in opposition to short vowels, and geminate consonants stand in opposition to single consonants. For reasons that will become apparent below, it is important that in quantity languages, long vowels and geminate consonants are the marked members of their respective oppositions. In addition, in quantity languages, syllables with long vowels are invariably heavy; in many languages, including Latin, codas contribute weight to syllables with short vowels, making them heavy, but in some languages, e.g., Malayalam (Broselow et al.
1997), coda consonants do not contribute weight. Importantly, in quantity languages, vowel length is essentially independent both of consonant length and of whether the
6 syllable is open or closed. This gives us the typology of syllables in a classical quantity language shown in 1.
(1) Open Closed Single consonant Geminate consonant Nongeminate coda Short vowel CVCV CVCV CVC.CV Long vowel CVCV CVCV CVC.CV
The four-way contrast of long and short vowels and consonants in a quantity language is seen in the data from Finnish in 2 (Becker 2002:94):
(2) Open Closed Single consonant Geminate consonant Short vowel muta ‘mud, nom. sing.’ mutta ‘but’ Long vowel muuta ‘but’ muutta ‘other, abess. sing.’
2. Syllable cut
Syllable cut systems show superficial similarities to quantity systems, but when inspected in depth they prove to be substantively different. Syllable cut systems make a syllable-level prosodic distinction between two kinds of syllables: smoothly cut and abruptly cut. The surface effects of these two categories are evident in both consonants and vowels, and cannot be localized to either one. In fact, the distinction between the two types of cut lies in the relationship between the vowel and a following consonant: in abruptly cut syllables, there is a close relationship between the vowel and a postvocalic consonant, while in smoothly cut syllables there is no such tight relationship. This relationship has both phonetic and phonological consequences. I will exemplify the properties of syllable cut systems using German, which is widely
7 accepted as a syllable cut language (e.g., Becker 1998; see also Auer et al. 2002:4 and
Vennemann 2004:2, note 4 for further references). I review the phonetic properties in section 2.1 and the phonological properties in section 2.2.
2.1 Phonetic properties
Phonetically, smoothly cut syllables generally have tense vowels, while abruptly cut syllables generally have lax vowels; likewise, the vowels in smoothly cut syllables tend to be peripheral, while those in abruptly cut syllables tend to be centralized. Abruptly cut syllables tend to have phonetically short vowels, while smoothly cut syllables in accented syllables generally have phonetically long vowels; this is not always the case in unaccented syllables. In addition, consonants following the vowel of a smoothly cut syllable tend to be phonetically shorter, while those following the vowel of an abruptly cut syllable tend to be phonetically longer (Vennemann 2000:253, Becker 2002:91–92).
These phonetic properties are summarized in 3.
(3) Some phonetic properties of syllable cut in German Smooth cut Abrupt cut Vowel: tense lax long in accented syllables short peripheral centralized Postvocalic consonant: comparatively short comparatively long
Thus, the German word Beet ‘(garden) plot’, which has smooth cut, is pronounced as
[bet], with a phonetically long, tense vowel, while the German word Bett ‘bed’, which has abrupt cut, is pronounced as [bt], with a phonetically short, lax vowel. This has led to the German vowel system being variously described as having distinctions between long and short vowels or between tense and lax vowels; however, because of the
8
structural properties also associated with the distinction, it is better analyzed as a
syllable cut opposition than as a distinction in quantity or featural quality (Becker 1998;
see also chapter 3, section 1.2 below).
In phonological transcriptions, smooth cut may be represented using a
circumflex over the vowel, while abrupt cut may be notated using a tie bar over the
vowel and the following consonant, so that the phonological form of smoothly cut Beet is transcribed as /bêt/, while the phonological form of abruptly cut Bett is transcribed as
/bet/, as in Murray 2000:640 and Murray, in press.
One of the criticisms often levelled against syllable cut theory is that there do not seem to be any phonetic properties of syllable cut that are unique to it; they all can have independent explanations. The difference in duration could be due to quantity, not syllable cut; the difference in tense vs. lax could be due to differences in underlying distinctive features, or it could be dependent on quantity. The attempt to find a unique phonetic correlate of syllable cut has indeed been difficult (see Hoole and Mooshammer
2002:1, Spiekermann 2002:1–2), but some progress has been made by Spiekermann
(e.g., 2002), who finds correlates based on the distribution of intensity; this will be discussed below. Before turning to Spiekermann’s work, I would like to note that although it is of course highly desirable for a phonetic correlate unique to syllable cut to be found, it is possible for phenomena of phonological relevance to have very elusive phonetic correlates; the syllable itself is a good example of this (Ladefoged and
Maddieson 1996:282).
Spiekermann (2002) investigates the distribution of intensity within the vowel as a possible correlate of syllable cut. There are three properties of intensity distribution
9 under investigation. First, how many intensity maxima are there in the vowel? Second, what shape is the intensity distribution: is it relatively sharp-peaked, or does it have a flatter plateau-like form? Third, at what point during the vowel does the intensity peak occur—is it early or late? Spiekermann investigates these measures in two different
German corpora: a controlled experimental corpus using nonsense words forming minimal pairs differing only in cut, and a corpus of natural running speech. To determine whether differences found are unique to syllable cut or shared with quantity, he compares the German results with the quantity languages Finnish and Czech, and finds that two of the measures characterize syllable cut and not quantity, while one characterizes both quantity and syllable cut.
The shared measure is the number of intensity maxima. In German, smoothly cut vowels tend to have more intensity maxima (typically 1–2) than abruptly cut syllables
(typically only one); the differences between the controlled and naturalistic German corpora are not significant for this measure or for any of the others (Spiekermann
2002:191). In Czech and Finnish, the number of intensity maxima is greater for long vowels than for short vowels, and the results are not significantly different from those in the controlled German corpus (Spiekermann 2002:195). Thus, the number of energy maxima does not distinguish between quantity and syllable cut, but is a correlate of both.
The other measures, however, are not shared, and are thus more useful as correlates of syllable cut in particular. Spiekermann (2002) finds that in German, smoothly cut syllables have a different intensity contour than abruptly cut syllables. He classifies contours into three types, ‘steigend-fallend’ (rising-falling), ‘steigend-haltend-
10
fallend’ (rising-holding-falling), and ‘steigend-streng haltend-fallend’ (rising-firmly holding-falling). A vowel is classified as rising-falling when compared to the absolute maximum in the vowel, intensity falls by more than 10% over the course of the whole vowel; this intensity pattern receives a score of 1. When the intensity falls by less than
10% but more than 5%, the vowel is counted as rising-holding-falling, and receives a score of 2. When the intensity falls by less than 5%, the vowel is counted as rising- firmly holding-falling, and receives a score of 3 (Spiekermann 2002:189–190). In
German, a significant difference on this measure is found between smooth and abrupt cut, with smooth cut having more level contours than abrupt cut. Smooth cut typically has rising-holding-falling or rising-firmly holding-falling contours (with an average score of 2.59 in the controlled corpus and 2.46 in the naturalistic corpus), while abrupt cut typically has rising-holding-falling contours (with an average score of 2.17 in the controlled corpus and 1.95 in the naturalistic corpus); the differences in results from the two German corpora are again not significant (Spiekermann 2002:191). On this measure, the quantity languages showed no significant differences between long and short vowels, while their results were highly significantly different from the results of the controlled German corpus (Spiekermann 2002:195–196). Thus, the shape of the energy contour is a correlate of syllable cut and not of quantity.
The last measure, the position of the intensity maximum, was only applied to vowels in which exactly one intensity maximum was measured (Spiekermann
2002:189). The vowel was divided into 9 equal segments, and a number was assigned based on which segment the intensity peak fell in. The prediction, based on the intuition that abruptly cut syllables are ‘cut off’ prematurely by the following consonant before
11 there is a chance for the energy to decline naturally, was that the intensity peak would occur later in abruptly cut syllables than in smoothly cut ones. In fact, the opposite proved to be the case: in German, the intensity maximum occurred earlier in abruptly cut syllables than in smoothly cut ones, at a very significant level. Smoothly cut vowels received an average score of 4.76 in the controlled corpus and 5.02 in the naturalistic corpus, while abruptly cut vowels had a score of 2.67 in the controlled corpus and 3.39 in the naturalistic corpus (Spiekermann 2002:187–188, 191–192). This measure, too, showed no significant differences between long and short vowels in the quantity languages, and the results of the quantity languages were significantly different from those of the controlled German corpus (Spiekermann 2002:194–195).
Spiekermann (2002:193–194) further finds that the intensity contour is a more reliable correlate of syllable cut than the position of the energy maximum, since the latter is more affected by other factors such as the individual identity of the vowel and the surrounding consonantal context. Thus, while the more readily accessible correlates of syllable cut, such as vowel duration, are not unique to syllable cut, there are also correlates that occur with syllable cut but not with quantity. To further investigate whether these correlates are in fact unique to syllable cut, it would be useful to investigate whether they are also correlates of a tense/lax distinction or not. To do this, it would be important to use languages where tense/lax cannot be analyzed as depending on syllable cut; in other words, languages where both tense and lax vowels can occur word-finally, in hiatus, and in other open syllables, since as discussed below, abrupt cut is limited to closed syllables.
12
2.2 Phonological properties
The two different cuts that a syllable can have importantly involve certain phonological
or structural properties, not just phonetic properties. One core structural property of
syllable cut is that abruptly cut syllables are necessarily closed; smoothly cut syllables,
by contrast, may be open or closed. This appears straightforwardly in final position,
where abruptly cut syllables are always closed, but smoothly cut syllables are not.
(Vennemann 1994:13–14, Becker 2002:92). In medial position, this requirement
naturally means that abruptly cut syllables cannot occur in hiatus, while smoothly cut
syllables can; things are more nuanced in medial position than in final position, as
medial abruptly cut syllables may be closed not only by a true coda, but also by an
ambisyllabic consonant if necessary. Since smoothly cut syllables need not be closed,
they do not cause a single following intervocalic consonant to be ambisyllabic. This is
manifested in the varying syllabifications of the German words Komma ‘comma’ and
Koma ‘coma’, which differ phonologically only in the cut of their first syllable: the [m]
in abruptly cut Komma /koma/ [kma] is ambisyllabic, while the [m] in smoothly cut
Koma /kôma/ [ko.ma] is simply an onset (Vennemann 1994:15).
Another important structural property of syllable cut is the distribution of syllable weight (Vennemann 1994:17–22). The only light syllables in a syllable cut system are those that are smoothly cut and open, i.e., true open syllables.1 All closed syllables are heavy, including those abruptly cut syllables which are ‘virtually closed’
1 Vennemann (1994:17) adds as further restriction for German, that the vowel in a light syllable must be monophthongal: ‘Ein Vollsilbe heißt leicht im Standarddeutschen, wenn sie offen, monophthongisch und sanft geschnitten is; sonst schwer.’ (A full syllable is considered light in Standard German, if it is open, monophthongal, and smoothly cut; otherwise it is heavy.) [All translations mine.]
13
by an ambisyllabic consonant. This is an important piece of evidence in distinguishing
syllable cut systems from quantity systems. Smooth cut may appear superficially as
vowel length, but an open smoothly cut syllable will be light, while in a quantity system
an open syllable with a long vowel will be heavy. In an analysis that does not take into
account the ambisyllabicity of intervocalic consonants after abruptly cut syllables, but
instead analyzes them as simple onsets (e.g., Moulton 1962:300 for Dutch), it would
also appear that open syllables with short vowels are heavy.
This distribution of weight is seen in the German Penult Rule. This is a rule of
German stress stating that stress cannot be retracted to the antepenult if the penult is
heavy (Vennemann 1990:407–408, 1994:17). This is shown in 4 and 5 using examples
drawn from Vennemann 1990:406, 1994:18, and 2004. The words in 4 exemplify the
fact that if the penult is an abruptly cut syllable, whether closed by a full coda or an
ambisyllabic consonant, the word cannot be stressed on the antepenult, while those in 5
show that smoothly cut open syllables are light and allow stress to be retracted beyond
them to the antepenult. (Unfortunately Vennemann does not provide any examples with
a smoothly cut closed syllable.)
(4) Penultimate heavy, stressed Veranda /vêra ndâ/ [ve.ran.da] ‘veranda’ Marokko /mâro kô/ [ma.rko] ‘Morocco’
(5) Penultimate light, stress on antepenult Kastanie /ka stânî/ [kas.ta.ni.] ‘chestnut’ Embryo /e mbryo/ [m.bry.o] ‘embryo’ Kanada /ka nâdâ/ [kana.da] ‘Canada’
14
Additionally, there are phonotactic differences between smoothly and abruptly cut syllables in German. In final syllables after abrupt cut, up to five final consonants are permitted, of which the last three must be coronal obstruents, but the first two need not be (e.g., Herbsts /herpsts/ ‘autumn (GEN)’); after smooth cut, however, a maximum of only four consonants is possible (e.g., Obsts /ôpsts/ ‘fruit (GEN)’), with the last three again being restricted to coronal obstruents (Becker 1998:49–59, 2002:93). Thus, smoothly cut syllables allow less coda complexity than abruptly cut syllables. At first sight, this may appear to contradict the claim that smooth cut is less marked than abrupt cut; I discuss a possible moraic theory explanation for this in chapter 3, section 3.3. The structural properties discussed above are summarized here in 6 (Vennemann 2000:254,
Becker 2002:93):
(6) Structural properties of syllable cut (in German) Smooth cut Abrupt cut Final syllables closed or open closed Non-final closed or open closed by coda or ambisyllabic consonant In hiatus possible impossible Weight light if open always heavy Codas less complex more complex
This gives us two key ways of distinguishing between quantity systems and syllable cut systems. The first is to determine whether ‘short vowels’ can occur in open syllables, and the second is to determine the weight of open syllables, particularly those with
‘long vowels.’ If ‘short vowels’ can occur in open syllables and open syllables with
‘long vowels’ are heavy, then the system is a quantity one; if ‘short vowels’ cannot
15 occur in open syllables, and open syllables with ‘long vowels’ are light, then the system is a syllable cut one.
The difference between quantity systems and syllable cut systems is also revealed through the markedness relations between the members of the different oppositions. In quantity systems, as mentioned above, long vowels are the marked member of the length opposition, and languages with long vowels also have short vowels. In syllable cut systems, however, smooth cut, with its phonetically longer vowels, is the unmarked member of the opposition (Vennemann 2000:252, Becker
2002:90). This is seen in the fact that smooth cut is permitted in a wider range of syllabic contexts than abrupt cut: smooth cut is allowed in both open and closed syllables, while abrupt cut is restricted to closed syllables. It also appears that when cut contrasts are neutralized in reduced syllables, they are neutralized to smooth cut, as discussed below in section 2.3 of this chapter; neutralization to smooth cut also occurs in hiatus (Murray 2000:619, Vennemann 1994:25–26), but this is a consequence of the restriction of abrupt cut to closed syllables, and so does not serve as independent evidence. It is also worth noting that speakers of syllable cut languages often have quite strong intuitions that abruptly cut vowels are artificially arrested. Murray (2000:641, note 27), citing Maas and Tophinke (2003:133; 145, note 2), reports that ‘a first grade student described the vowel in Mutter “mother” as “gebremst” (“stopped, slowed down”), and a fourth grade student described the vowel in abruptly cut syllables as
“gequetscht” (“squeezed, squashed”).’
16
2.3 Syllable cut and schwa
So far, the discussion of syllable cut has revolved around syllables with full vowels.
Syllables with reduced vowels behave differently from those with full vowels and deserve special attention. At least in German, reduced syllables have no syllable cut opposition; it seems that they default to the unmarked smooth cut. Vennemann
(2000:256) claims that reduced syllables have ‘an imperfectly developed energy contour,’ and therefore cannot support a syllable cut contrast; I leave it as an open question whether the lack of cut contrasts in reduced syllables is universal or not, and thus whether Vennemann’s explanation is correct; however, the Dutch facts that I discuss below in chapter 4, section 3 are consistent with his claims.
Initially the claim that reduced syllables have smooth cut may appear problematic. The prototypical vowel of reduced syllables is schwa, which serves this function in German and Dutch as in many other languages. The claim that schwa, as the reduced vowel, is limited to smoothly cut syllables may appear inconsistent with the phonetic properties of smooth cut given above in 3: smooth cut generally has phonetically long, tense, peripheral vowels, while schwa is phonetically short, lax, and central. In other words, schwa appears to have the phonetic properties of abrupt cut, not of smooth cut. I believe, however, that there is a way around this difficulty. There are two oppositions to be kept in mind here. First, there is the opposition of full vs. reduced vowels. Second, there is the opposition of smooth vs. abrupt cut. The question is how these oppositions interact. The answer I would like to propose lies in the fact that the phonetic properties of syllable cut have been determined specifically by looking at full vowels, and are only characteristic of cut as it is manifested in full vowels. The phonetic
17
opposition between short-lax-central vowels under abrupt cut and long-tense-peripheral vowels under smooth cut is a surface distinction between two categories that underlyingly differ on a deeper level, and this particular set of surface distinctions is manifested clearly in full vowels, but does not directly extend to reduced vowels. The opposition between full and reduced vowels also has a phonetic manifestation, and this independent phonetic difference between phonological categories happens to have a considerable similarity to the phonetic difference between smoothly and abruptly cut full vowels. Thus, full vowels are generally longer and more peripheral than reduced vowels, which are generally very short and central, as well as lax. The phonetic properties of cut in reduced vowels cannot be determined by directly comparing them
with the phonetic properties of cut in full vowels. If a cut opposition could be found in
reduced syllables (contrary to Vennemann’s claims!), it would be possible to investigate
its phonetic properties, and perhaps find that they mirrored the phonetic properties of
cut in full syllables; for instance, it might be found that while schwa in smoothly cut
syllables was indeed very short, schwa in abruptly cut syllables was even shorter.
However, since no cut opposition has been found in reduced syllables, and quite
possibly none ever exists, the question of how syllable cut is manifested phonetically in
this context is unanswerable.
Given that no cut opposition exists, what can be said about the cut of reduced
syllables? There are three possibilities. First, it could be that the concept of cut is
meaningless in reduced syllables. Second, it could be that reduced syllables always have
smooth cut; this is what Vennemann (2000:256) appears to propose, and I will show
more evidence from Dutch supporting this claim in section 3 of chapter 4. This is also
18
consistent with the claim that smooth cut is the default, unmarked cut, which naturally
occurs when opposition is excluded. Third, it could be that reduced syllables always
have abrupt cut; as far as I know this has not been seriously proposed, and I am aware
of no possible evidence for it, aside from schwa’s sharing in the phonetic properties of
vowels in abruptly cut syllables; on the contrary, there is considerable evidence against
it, as schwa frequently occurs in open syllables, including word-finally.
2.4 History of syllable cut theory
The concept of syllable cut is commonly traced back to Eduard Sievers (e.g., 1901) in
the late 1800s and early 1900s, and it is Sievers’ treatment of the concept that has had
the most impact on subsequent linguists (see Vennemann 2000:252; Spiekermann
2002:182). Restle (2003:7–20) traces syllable-cut-like concepts much further back, all
the way to ca. 1534, becoming more common in the mid-1700s. The frequency of early
descriptions give evidence the saliency of syllable cut to native speakers of syllable cut
languages. Following Sievers, the concept of syllable cut was employed by many pre-
generative linguists, including such prominent figures as Jespersen and Trubetzkoy
(Restle 2003:20–32; Vennemann 2000:252). With the advent of generative linguistics,
the idea of syllable cut was largely laid aside. In the last few decades, beginning with
Vennemann 1991, there has been a revival of the concept of syllable cut. A number of linguists, working especially but not exclusively on German, have been re-exploring and refining the concept. Among these are Vennemann (e.g., 1991, 1994, 2000), Becker
(e.g., 1998, 2002), and Murray (e.g., 2000, 2002). In addition to the phonological research just cited, investigation is being done into the phonetic basis of syllable cut
19
(e.g., Spiekermann 2002, discussed in section 2.1 above, and Hoole & Mooshammer
2002). For a fuller history of syllable cut, see Restle 2003.
20
Chapter Three: The representation of syllable cut
0. Introduction
There is no currently agreed-upon system of representing syllable cut, either inside or outside moraic theory. Within moraic theory, syllable cut languages have been analyzed in two main ways, one based on mora-count (i.e., quantity), and one based on vowel quality. Both are unsatisfactory as they fail to explain some of the important properties of syllable cut. I discuss these approaches in section 1.2. As an alternative, various non- moraic systems of representing syllable cut have also been proposed, as discussed in section 2, but there is still no standardization among them and they are not widely accepted by linguists working on other phenomena than syllable cut. In section 3 I propose a new moraic analysis of syllable cut which is able to account for the facts that were problematic for previous analyses.
1. The problem of moraic representation of syllable cut
1.1 The elements of moraic theory
Moraic theory (Hyman 1985, Hayes 1989) attempts to explain syllable-level prosodic phenomena by means of associations between melodic material and units of prosodic weight called moras, along with other prosodic units such as syllables. The number of moras in a syllable determines its weight: a syllable with a single mora is light, while a syllable with two moras is heavy. There are two common ways for a syllable to be heavy: it may have a long vowel, or it may be closed by a weight-bearing coda consonant. Moraic theory accounts for these in the following ways. Long vowels are distinguished from short vowels by the number of moras they are associated with. A
21 short vowel is associated with a single mora, while a long vowel is associated with two moras. Since a syllable with a long vowel must contain at least two moras, it is necessarily heavy; open syllables with long and short vowels are represented as in 7.
(7) Vowel length a. b.
μ μμ
CV CV: Light Heavy
Consonants may also have moras, in which case they are weight-bearing coda consonants: they add a mora to a syllable and thus make a syllable with a short vowel heavy. However, unlike vowels, consonants often do not have moras. Onset consonants and weightless codas are not associated with their own moras. Most varieties of moraic theory link onsets directly to the syllable node, though some scholars instead link onsets to the same mora as the nucleus (e.g., Hyman 1985, Kager 1990:249, Gamon
1996:116). The former is adopted here. Weightless coda consonants do not add weight to a syllable; a syllable with a short vowel and a weightless coda is light. Weightless codas have been variously analyzed in moraic theory as linking directly to the syllable node (e.g., Morén 2001, Piggott 1995) or as sharing the mora of a preceding vowel
(e.g., Hayes 1989, Broselow et al. 1997, Bye 2005). I crucially rely upon mora-sharing in my analysis, along the lines argued for by Broselow et al. (1997), which I discuss in section 3.2 below. Weight-bearing codas are represented as in 8a, and weightless codas are represented using mora-sharing, as in 8b.
22
(8) Closed syllables a. b.
μμ μ
CVC CVC Heavy Light
Geminate and ambisyllabic consonants are treated alike in moraic theory, as simultaneous codas and onsets. A weight-bearing geminate or ambisyllabic consonant is thus represented as in 9a; a weightless geminate or ambisyllabic consonant (as found in e.g., Malayalam (Broselow et al. 1997:50)) is represented in the mora-sharing analysis used here as in 9b.
(9) Geminate and ambisyllabic consonants a. b.
μ μ μ μ μ
CV C V CV C V
Thus, moras are used both to account for segmental quantity contrasts and for the determination of weight.
The use of moras as units of phonological weight is not new to moraic theory as described here; it is the exclusive use of moras instead of timing units or other syllabic constituents that distinguishes moraic theory. X-slot theories of prosody tend to treat moras as derived elements, assigned to X-slots in the rhyme of a syllable. This use of moras will appear in some of the analyses discussed below.
23
1.2 Moraic theory and syllable cut: unsuccessful accounts
Moraic theory is quite successful at explaining the prosodic phenomena of a variety of
different languages. Among the types of prosodic systems readily accounted for by
moraic theory are the classical quantity systems discussed above in chapter 2, section 1
in contrast to syllable cut systems. Vowel length is readily accounted for by
monomoraic and bimoraic vowels, consonant gemination by an underlying distinction
between moraic and nonmoraic consonants, and weight-by-position is operative, so that
closed syllables are heavy. Syllable cut systems, by contrast, are not easily accounted
for by moraic theory. In this section I outline some analyses of syllable cut languages
that have been or could be made, and show why they are inadequate.
Several of the properties of syllable cut discussed above in chapter 2 prove particularly important in evaluating attempts to analyze such systems using moraic theory. Phonologically, it is important that abruptly cut syllables must be closed while smoothly cut syllables may be open or closed, and that only smoothly cut open syllables are light, while all others are heavy. Phonetically, it is important that vowels are longer in smoothly cut syllables than in abruptly cut ones. These properties, taken together, prove problematic for the superficially simplest analyses of syllable cut systems.
There are two basic approaches that have often been taken to syllable cut systems, both inside and outside moraic theory: vowel quantity approaches, and vowel quality approaches. Each of these approaches can account for some but not all of the properties needing explanation.
In a vowel quantity approach to a syllable cut language, smoothly cut syllables are analyzed as having long (i.e., bimoraic) vowels, while abruptly cut syllables are
24
analyzed as having short (i.e., monomoraic) vowels. This successfully explains why
vowels in smoothly cut syllables are phonetically longer than vowels in abruptly cut syllables: phonetic vowel length is simply the surface realization of the phonological
length of the vowel. Vowel quantity approaches to syllable cut are very common; an
examples is Wiese 1996 for German; such analyses for Dutch will be discussed in
chapter 4, section 2.2. In addition to explaining the surface facts of vowel length, a
quantity analysis can also be made to explain the coda requirement in abruptly cut
syllables by saying that all syllables must be bimoraic. This requirement forces syllables
with short vowels to have a moraic coda in order to produce a bimoraic syllable. This
approach to German is taken in e.g., Féry 1996:64–65, 76–83. However, there is an
inescapable trade-off to accounting for the coda requirement in this way: with a
bimoraic requirement, it is impossible to account for the fact that open smoothly cut syllables are light, as shown by the Penult Rule discussed above in section 2.2 of chapter 2. For the bimoraic requirement to fulfil its function, open smoothly cut syllables must be bimoraic, and thus heavy, in contradiction to the weight facts. Indeed,
even without the bimoraic requirement, the vowel quantity approach must make these
‘long’ vowels bimoraic to distinguish them from ‘short’ vowels. Féry 1996:77 observes
that German open syllables with ‘long’ vowels behave as light, but has difficulty
accounting for them; she proposes that certain moras can be invisible to higher metrical
levels (Féry 1996:78–83). In addition, syllables with schwa are difficult to account for
under a bimoraic requirement, and generally must be accommodated either by some
special exception, or by an ad hoc measure making schwa bimoraic against all
appearances. Thus, the vowel quantity approach not only does not explain the facts of
25
syllable cut, but makes false predictions about syllable weight, which can only be
accommodated by ad hoc adjustments.
Languages with syllable cut systems are also often analyzed in terms of vowel
quality: smoothly cut syllables are analyzed as having tense vowels, while abruptly cut
syllables are analyzed as having lax vowels. Such analyses of Dutch include De
Schutter 1994 and Van Marle 1980. A quality analysis is superficially plausible, since
one of the phonetic properties of syllable cut is vowel tenseness under smooth cut and
laxness under abrupt cut. In a vowel quality approach, the distinction between smooth
and abrupt cut is featural, and not prosodic; all vowels are monomoraic. This analysis successfully accounts for the fact that smoothly cut open syllables are light, which was problematic in a quantity analysis. In a quality analysis, vowel length is then seen as a derivative property of tenseness, which is plausible. The problem with this approach lies in the requirement for abruptly cut syllables to be closed, which has no principled
explanation in a vowel quality approach, since the difference between the cuts is
featural, and there is no difference in prosodic structure. Thus, a quality analysis also
fails to account satisfactorily for the properties of syllable cut.
2. Nonmoraic systems of representation
Since both of the obvious ways to account for syllable cut in moraic theory pose
problems, other prosodic theories have been developed to attempt to account for it.
These include Becker’s (1998, 2002) theory of the syllable with an implosion position, discussed in section 2.1, and Vennemann’s (e.g., 1994, 2000) Nuclear Phonology, discussed in section 2.2.
26
2.1 Becker’s syllable with implosion position
Becker (1998, 2002) presents a theory of syllable structure for syllable cut languages in which a syllable has optional marginal components, Anfangsrand ‘initial margin’ and
Endrand ‘final margin’, and a required component of Kernsilbe ‘core syllable’, which in turn consists of two required components, nucleus and implosion. In smoothly cut syllables, the vowel fills both the nucleus and implosion positions, while in abruptly cut syllables, it fills only the nucleus, and the implosion position must be filled by a consonant. This is in fact essentially another variant of the bipositional rhyme requirement found in many quantity analyses of syllable cut, and it faces the same difficulty: it predicts open smoothly cut syllables to be heavy. Becker (2002:93–94) attempts to circumvent this difficulty by saying that unstressed open syllables have allophonically tense vowels and are light (thus accounting for the Penult Rule described above in section 2.2 of chapter 2), but that stressed syllables with phonologically tense/long vowels are heavy (see Becker 2002:93–94, including note 9).
2.2 Vennemann’s Nuclear Phonology
In Vennemann’s (e.g., 1994, 2000) Nuclear Phonology, a syllable is made up not of onset and rhyme, nor of moraic and nonmoraic elements, but rather of a crescendo and a decrescendo, which together form an ‘energy contour.’ This is similar but not identical to the idea of a sonority contour rising and falling over the course of a syllable.
The crescendo and decrescendo are linked to timing units, which are linked to the segments themselves. The way timing units are linked to the crescendo and decrescendo determines their syllabic position. Onsets and nuclei are both always linked to the crescendo of a syllable. Codas are always linked to the decrescendo of a syllable.
27
Ambisyllabic consonants, as simultaneous onsets and codas, are linked to the
decrescendo of one syllable and the crescendo of the next. The difference between
smoothly cut and abruptly cut syllables, in this theory, depends on the first link in the
decrescendo. In a smoothly cut syllable, the nucleus is also linked to the decrescendo;
this represents the slow decline of energy over the course of a smoothly cut syllable. In
an abruptly cut syllable, the nucleus is not linked to the decrescendo; since the
decrescendo must be linked to something, a coda is thus required.2 The linking of the
decrescendo to the coda represents the way the energy of a syllable is ‘cut off’ abruptly
by the coda consonant, rather than declining smoothly over the course of the vowel.
These features are shown in the representations in 10 and 11.
(10) Smooth Abrupt a. Beet b. Bett < > < >
| | | | | | b e t b e t
(11) Smooth Abrupt a. Koma b. Komma < > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | k o m a k o m a (based on Vennemann 2000:255–256)
2 Technically, the difference lies in whether the first link from the decrescendo attaches to the same timing point as the last link from the crescendo or to a following timing point, not whether it attaches to the nucleus or postvocalic consonant (Vennemann 2000:254–255); the distinction is irrelevant here, but see Vennemann 2000:274–276 for a case where it could be significant.
28
This accounts both for the phonetic length differences between the cuts and for the fact that abruptly cut syllables must be closed. The vowel in a smoothly cut syllable is linked to both the crescendo and the decrescendo, so it is longer than the vowel in an abruptly cut syllable, which is linked only to the crescendo, and thus does not extend into the decrescendo of the syllable. Since a syllable must have a decrescendo, and nuclei in abruptly cut syllables are not linked to the decrescendo, abruptly cut syllables must have a coda element linked to the decrescendo.
Vennemann (1994:17–33) is also able to derive the weight of syllables from his representations, including open smoothly cut syllables as light, although I will not go into detail here. Quantity phenomena, in contrast to syllable cut phenomena, are accounted for by varying the number of timing units associated with segments.
Vennemann’s theory accounts for syllable cut more adequately than the usual moraic analyses, and thus presents a significant challenge to moraic theory; however, it is not clear yet whether it is able to handle all the variety of phenomena that moraic theory can account for. In section 3 I provide a new moraic analysis of syllable cut which provides a much more adequate account than those discussed in section 1.2, and which thus enables moraic theory to withstand the challenge of alternative theories that account for syllable cut.
3. A new mora-sharing analysis of syllable cut
In this section I present a new system of representing syllable cut within moraic theory based on mora-sharing along the lines of Broselow et al. 1997. In this system, abrupt cut involves an underlying association between the mora of the vowel and a following consonant; coda consonants additionally gain a mora through weight-by-position. This
29
analysis successfully explains the relevant facts of syllable cut that were missed by prior
moraic analyses: open smoothly cut syllables are correctly predicted to be light, and
abruptly cut syllables are correctly predicted to require codas.
3.1 Requirements for a moraic representation of syllable cut
What is required for a successful moraic account of syllable cut? First, it must correctly
account for the observed weight properties of different types of syllables. Smoothly cut
open syllables must be monomoraic, while closed syllables, whether smoothly or
abruptly cut, must be bimoraic. Second, it should explain the fact that abruptly cut
syllables must be closed. Third, it should be consistent with the observed length
properties of vowels and consonants. Finally, it should ideally be consistent with the
observed markedness difference between smooth and abrupt cut.
We can deduce that in syllable cut systems, coda consonants (at least under
smooth cut) have independent moras, since a smoothly cut open syllable is light while a
smoothly cut closed syllable is heavy; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and in
light of the fact that abruptly cut syllables are always closed and always heavy, it is
reasonable to conclude that codas in abruptly cut syllables also have independent moras.
This gives the moraic distribution shown on the underlined syllables in 12.
(12) Smooth cut Abrupt cut Weight: μ μμ μμ μμ
Structure: CV.CV CVC CVCV CVC Example: [koma] [bet] [kma] [bt] (German) Koma Beet Komma Bett ‘coma’ ‘(garden) plot’ ‘comma’ ‘bed’
30
This is the moraic distribution required by the weight facts; however, it is deficient in
two ways. First, it does not differentiate in any way between smooth and abrupt cut in
true closed syllables. Second, it does not account for the abrupt cut coda requirement.
One could attempt to differentiate segmentally between smooth and abrupt cut on the
basis of vowel quality, but this would produce exactly the vowel quality analysis that
was found wanting in section 1.2 above due to its failure to explain the coda
requirement. In 3.3 below I propose a solution to this based on mora-sharing as
discussed in Broselow et al. 1997, to which I now turn.
3.2 Mora-sharing and phonetic duration: Broselow et al. 1997
Broselow et al. (1997) provide evidence that supports a mora-sharing analysis of
weightless codas. Their investigation of the duration of vowels and coda consonants in
several different languages finds that the phonological representations required for these
languages in a mora-sharing analysis are closely reflected in the phonetic durations of
the segments in question.3 They investigate three languages with differing prosodic
systems: Hindi (with weight-bearing codas), Malayalam (with weightless codas), and
Levantine Arabic (with weight-bearing codas in some contexts and weightless codas in others).
On the basis of stress facts Hindi is determined to have three prosodically different categories of syllables: monomoraic light syllables of the shape CV, bimoraic heavy syllables of the shapes CVC and CVV, and trimoraic superheavy syllables of the shapes CVVC and CVCC. (VV is used here to represent a long vowel.) Stress falls on
3 However, Broselow et al. (1997:55) do allow for the possibility that some languages may link weightless coda consonants directly to the syllable node, and have different durational patterns.
31
heaviest syllable in the word. If there are multiple syllables of this weight, the rightmost
nonfinal one is stressed (Broselow et al. 1997:48–49). The data in 13 show stress on a
superheavy syllable where present; in 13(a–c) stress falls on the only superheavy in the
word, while 13d,e show the rightmost non-final superheavy being stressed when more
than one is present.
(13) Hindi stress in words with a superheavy syllable (Broselow et al. 1997:49) a. óox.a.baa.ni ‘talkative’ d. áas.mãã.aah ‘highly placed’ b. réez.aa.rii ‘small change’ e. aas.máan.aah ‘highly placed’ c. mu.sal.máan ‘Muslim’ (alternative pronunciation)
The data in 14 show stress on a heavy syllable when the word contains no superheavy
syllable; in 14c,d the only heavy syllable in the word is stressed, while in 14a,b the
rightmost non-final heavy syllable is stressed. The fact that CVC syllables are heavy is
evidenced by 14d.
(14) Hindi stress in words without a superheavy syllable (Broselow et al. 1997:49) a. kaa.ríi.a.rii ‘craftsmanship’ c. ru.pi.áa ‘rupee’ b. roo.záa.naa ‘daily’ d. ki.dár ‘which way’
Both long vowels and coda consonants contribute to syllable weight; thus, in Hindi,
coda consonants do not share moras with vowels, but rather have independent moras,
contributing weight to syllables. This results in the typology of syllables shown in 15.4
4 CVCC syllables are also superheavy, implying that each of the two coda consonants has an independent mora; this syllable type does not play a role in Broselow et al.’s analysis and will not be further considered here.
32
(15) a. CV – light b. CVC – heavy c. CVV – heavy d. CVVC – superheavy
μ μμ μμ μμμ
CV CVC CV C V C
The stress facts of Malayalam, in contrast to Hindi, show a distinction between only two
types of syllables, light and heavy, and this distinction is determined solely on the basis
of vowel length without reference to coda consonants. CV and CVC syllables are light,
while CVV and CVVC syllables are heavy. Primary stress is normally on the first
syllable; however, when the first syllable is light and the second syllable is heavy, the second syllable is stressed. Subsequent heavy syllables receive secondary stress
(Broselow et al. 1997:50). This is shown in the data in 16; items 16e,f in particular show that a closed syllable with a short vowel acts as light, since it does not prevent a following heavy syllable from being stressed:
(16) Malayalam stress (Broselow et al. 1997:50) a. ká.ra.i ‘bear’ b. káa.ra.am ‘reason’ c. ka.ráa.r ‘agreement’ d. pá.a.am ‘town’ e. pa.áa.am ‘army’5 f. a.áa.ra.sàat.mìi.ka.ra.am ‘carbon assimilation’
The weightless coda consonants share the mora of the preceding vowel, resulting in the syllable types shown in 17.
5 In Broselow et al. (1997), no second syllable break is indicated in this word; I assume in accordance with universal principles that the [] should be an onset and not a coda.
33
(17) a. CV – light b. CVC – light c. CVV – heavy d. CVVC – heavy
μ μ μμ μμ
CV CVC CV CVC
Broselow et al. (1997) compare the duration of vowels and consonants within each of
the languages they study, and find a tight relationship between moraic association and
duration. For Hindi, they find that vowel length is not significantly affected by the
presence of a coda consonant: long vowels, which have two independent moras in all
environments, show no significant durational difference between closed syllables and
open ones. Short vowels, with one independent mora in all environments, are significantly shorter than long vowels, and again show no significant difference in duration between open and closed syllables. Coda consonants, represented with an independent mora after both short and long vowels, also show no significant difference between the two environments (Broselow et al. 1997:52–53). Sample Hindi results are shown in 18; mean durations are given in milliseconds, with standard deviations in parentheses, and statistical level of significance given below the comparisons.
(18) Hindi segment duration (Broselow et al 1997:53; speaker 1) Vowel duration: Consonant duration: 143.5 (20.8) 142.5 (20.4) 66.1 (15.7) 66.0 (11.2) 109.3 (26.1) 115.6 (23.2) μ μ μ μ μ μ μ μ VV = VVC > V = VC VVC = VC p = .91 p < .0001 p =.98 p = .54
For Malayalam, Broselow et al. (1997) find that vowel length is affected by the presence of codas. A long vowel in an open syllable, with two independent moras, is
34 significantly longer than a long vowel in a closed syllable, with one independent and one shared mora. A short vowel in an open syllable, with one independent mora, is similarly significantly longer than a short vowel in a closed syllable, with a shared mora only. A long vowel in a closed syllable, with an independent mora and a shared mora, is also significantly longer than a short vowel in an open syllable, with one independent mora. Coda consonants, which are associated with a shared mora after both long and short vowels, show no significant durational difference between contexts (Broselow et al. 1997:54–55). Sample Malayalam results are shown in 19.
(19) Malayalam segment duration (Broselow et al. 1997:54–55; speaker 1) Vowel duration: Consonant duration: 216.8 (13.6) 166.3 (18.1) 96.2 (11.3) 77.0 (3.9) 71.0 (2.7) 67.0 (12.3) μ μ μ+shared μ μ shared μ shared μ shared μ VV > VVC > V > VC VVC = VC p = .0001 p = .0001 p =.003 p = .677
Levantine Arabic provides further support of the claim that mora-sharing is reflected in phonetic duration, particularly in the area of consonant duration. The relevant part of the Levantine prosodic system is non-final syllables, where syllables are divided into two categories: light syllables of the shape CV, and heavy syllables of the shapes CVC,
CVV, and CVVC (and possibly CVCC) (Broselow et al. 1997:55–57). When the final syllable is not stressed (under conditions which I will not go into here), the penultimate syllable is stressed if it is heavy, as in 20(a–c), otherwise the antepenult is stressed, as in
20(d–f).
35
(20) Levantine Arabic stress (Broselow et al. 1997:56) a. da.ras.túu.ha ‘you (PL) studied it (FEM)’ d. mád.ra.se. ‘school’ b. da.rás.hon ‘he studied them’ e. dá.ra.su ‘they studied’ c. ma.náam.hon ‘he did not dream them’ f. má.sa.lan ‘example’
Crucially, there is no evidence that CVVC syllables are superheavy or in any way different from other heavy syllables (Broselow et al. 1997:56–57). This implies that coda consonants in CVC syllables have independent moras, while coda consonants in
CVVC syllables share moras, making both syllable types bimoraic. Thus we have the syllable typology shown in 21.
(21) a. CV – light b. CVC – heavy c. CVV – heavy d. CVVC – heavy
μ μ μ μμ μμ
CV CVC CV CVC
For Levantine Arabic, Broselow et al. (1997) find that short vowels, which have an
independent mora in closed and open syllables, do not have significantly different
durations in the two contexts. Long vowels in closed syllables, which have an
independent mora and a shared mora, are significantly shorter than long vowels in open
syllables, which have two independent moras. Long vowels in closed syllables, with an
independent mora and a shared mora, are also longer than short vowels, with one
independent mora. The differential representation of coda consonants is also reflected in
duration: after long vowels, codas share a mora, and are shorter than codas after a short
vowel, where they have an independent mora (Broselow et al. 1997:58–60). Sample
Levantine Arabic results are shown in 22.
36
(22) Levantine Arabic segment duration (Broselow et al. 1997:59; Jordanian speaker) Vowel duration Consonant duration 161.0 (9.9) 131.6 (5.5) 80.2 (9.0) 79.7 (6.6) 67.6 (9.4) 88.4 (9.3) μ μ μ+shared μ μ μ shared μ μ VV > VVC > V = VC VVC < VC p < .00001 p < .00001 p =.94 p = .0002
Broselow et al.’s results show that in the languages investigated, the more moras a
segment lays claim to, the longer it is, and that shared moras contribute less length to a
segment than full moras do. This is seen in both consonants and vowels. The differing
contributions of independent moras and shared moras provide good evidence for a
mora-sharing representation of weightless codas, at least in languages where they affect
durational properties in this manner. In section 3.3 I propose that the length properties of consonants and vowels in syllable cut languages are due to mora-sharing effects.
3.3 A mora-sharing analysis of syllable cut: surface representations
I propose that smooth and abrupt cut can be distinguished prosodically by bringing mora-sharing into the picture: in abrupt cut, a coda consonant not only has an independent mora, but also shares the mora of the preceding vowel. Thus, smoothly and abruptly cut CVC syllables are differentiated as in 23.
(23) a. Smooth cut b. Abrupt cut
Weight: μμ μμ
Structure: CVC CVC Example: [bet] Beet ‘(garden) plot’ [bt] Bett ‘bed’
37
Open smoothly cut syllables and their nearest abruptly cut counterparts are shown in 24.
With CVCV structures, abruptly cut syllables have the added complication of
ambisyllabicity; in addition to being a coda of an abruptly cut syllable with the structure
in 24b, the intervocalic consonant is also the onset of the following syllable:
(24) a. Smooth cut b. Abrupt cut
Weight: μ μ μμ μ
Structure: CV.CV CVCV Example: [koma] Koma ‘coma’ [kma] Komma ‘comma’
This structure explains not only the weight properties of the different types of syllables,
but also the abrupt cut coda requirement and the facts about the lengths of consonants
and vowels under smooth vs. abrupt cut. Since abrupt cut is analyzed as a structure in
which a vocalic mora is shared with a coda consonant (which additionally bears an
independent mora), abruptly cut open syllables are intrinsically impossible, since in an
open syllable there is no coda consonant that could share the vocalic mora.
As discussed above, Broselow et al. (1997) found that moraic structure,
including mora-sharing, is reflected in the phonetic duration of segments in several
different languages. If moraic structure is reflected in phonetic length in syllable cut
languages too, then we would predict that abruptly cut vowels, which have only a
shared mora, would be shorter than smoothly cut vowels, which have an independent
mora. This is exactly what we find. We would also predict that a consonant following
the vowel of an abruptly cut syllable, which has an independent mora and a shared
mora, would be longer than a consonant following the vowel of a smoothly cut syllable,
38
which has only an independent mora (if it is a coda) or no mora (if it is an onset).
Again, this is exactly the phonetic pattern that is found. Thus, the mora-sharing account
of syllable cut is not only consistent with the facts of both consonant and vowel length,
but is actually able to explain them.
The mora-sharing analysis above is also consistent with the observed markedness of the
two cuts: the more marked abrupt cut is representationally more complex than the less
marked smooth cut. An apparent problem with the treatment of abrupt cut as more
marked than smooth cut is the fact that abrupt cut allows more complex coda clusters
than smooth cut. The restrictions in German are that the vowel in a final smoothly cut
syllable may be followed by up to four consonants, the last three of which are coronal
obstruents (e.g., Obsts /ôpsts/ ‘fruit (gen)’), while the vowel in an abruptly cut syllable
may be followed by up to five consonants, the last three of which again must be coronal
obstruents (e.g., Herbsts /herpsts/ ‘autumn (GEN)’); this is shown schematically in 25
(Becker 2002:93):
(25) VC1 C2 C3 C4 C5 V: cor cor cor VV obstr obstr obstr
If coronal obstruents may be non-moraic appendices, then this distribution of consonants can be explained by a bimoraic maximum on syllables. In an abruptly cut syllable with two coda consonants, the first shares the mora of the vowel, and only the second coda consonant gains a mora from weight-by-position. In a smoothly cut
syllable, two-consonant codas (apart from non-coronal obstruents) are not allowed:
neither consonant shares the mora of the vowel, and a structure with two consonants
39 sharing a single mora is prohibited, so that each consonant would have to have its own mora. Since this would make a trimoraic syllable, and trimoraic syllables are also prohibited, this number of coda consonants cannot surface. To this may be added up to three coronal obstruent appendices which attach to a higher level of structure such as the foot or the prosodic word. Sample representations for maximal syllables with three appendices are shown in 26.
(26) a. Abrupt cut b. Smooth cut
μ μ μ μ h e r p s t s o p s t s [hrpsts] [opsts] Herbsts Obsts
Although the basic syllable cut representations in 23–24 may look somewhat unusual, they are formed purely from already existing elements of moraic theory. The elements of the analysis are: (a) monomoraic vowels, (b) weight-bearing coda consonants, (c) mono- and bi-moraic syllables, (d) geminate/ambisyllabic consonants as simultaneous codas and onsets, (e) mora sharing between a vowel and a coda consonant, and (f) segments linked to two moras. Elements (a–d) require no further comment. Element (e) was discussed above in section 3.2. To some degree, element (f) is also straightforward and familiar: the linking of a single segment to two moras is the canonical moraic representation of a long vowel. However, in my analysis, it is coda consonants, and not vowels, that are linked to two moras. This too has been proposed before. Hayes
(1989:257–258) accounts for long syllabic consonants by making them bimoraic; Hayes
40
(1989:287, 295–296) also proposes that certain geminates in Estonian are bimoraic. Bye
(2005:191) further proposes bimoraic consonants for West Finnmark Saami in order to account for a three-way length contrast in intervocalic consonants in foot-medial position. The contrast between singletons, plain geminates, and overlong geminates in this language is shown in 27.
(27) West Finnmark Saami consonant length contrasts (Bye 2005:191) a. singleton kaa.ruu ‘by consenting’ b. plain geminate kaar.ruu ‘he/she consents’ c. overlong geminate kaar.ruu ‘consenting’
Singletons and plain geminates follow the usual representations of simple and geminate consonants in moraic theory, being nonmoraic and monomoraic respectively, while the overlong geminates are bimoraic. Thus, it is only the combination of these elements into an analysis of syllable cut that is novel, not any of the elements themselves.
The mora-sharing account of syllable cut that I am proposing is superior to the standard quantity analyses, because it correctly accounts for the lightness of open smoothly cut syllables, where the quantity analyses incorrectly required heaviness. It remains able to account for the facts of vowel length, and further has a good explanation for the dependency of postvocalic consonant length on syllable cut. The mora-sharing analysis is superior to a quality analysis, because it can account for the coda requirement in abruptly cut syllables, which was inexplicable in the quantity analysis, and it also has a better explanation of the length facts. In addition, abrupt cut is representationally more complex than smooth cut, which is consistent with the fact that
41 it is the marked member of the opposition; this markedness relationship is missed by both quality and quantity analyses.
3.4 Mora-sharing and underlying representations
I have made a proposal for the surface representations of smooth and abrupt cut and how they can be differentiated in moraic theory. This naturally prompts one to ask what the underlying representations of the different cuts are, and additionally why syllable cut languages permit these syllable types and not others. Why are abruptly cut syllables permitted, with an independent mora in addition to a shared mora, while light closed syllables, with a shared mora only, are forbidden? The latter would appear to be less complex, so why are they avoided?
In moraic theory, weight-bearing coda consonants are generally not assumed to have underlying moras unless their moraicity is contrastive, as in the case of contrastive geminates. Rather, they gain a mora through some sort of weight-by-position principle, or, in Optimality Theory, a constraint ranking. I propose that in syllable cut systems, codas in both smoothly and abruptly cut syllables gain their independent moras through a weight-by-position effect, which must be formulated in a way that is not satisfied by a coda that only shares a mora. I explore this below within the framework of Optimality
Theory, and return with principles that need not be restricted to an OT analysis.
This proposal means that weight-by-position must be dealt with differently from the way in which Broselow et. al (1997) handle it. They propose that languages prefer mora-sharing or independent-mora structures for codas on the basis the markedness constraints NOSHAREDMORA, and NOCMORA. NOSHAREDMORA states that ‘moras should be linked to single segments,’ and NOCMORA states that ‘the head of a mora
42
must be a vowel’ (Broselow et al. 1997:65). Weight-by-position is derived from the
action of NOSHAREDMORA. If NOSHAREDMORA is ranked high and NOCMORA is ranked low, independent-mora structures are preferred for codas, while if NOCMORA is
ranked high and NOSHAREDMORA is ranked low, then mora-sharing structures are preferred.6 Under this particular set of markedness constraints, the abrupt cut structure will never be favoured over either of the other structures, since it violates both constraints, while the others violate only one each, as shown in 28.7
(28) Constraints violated by different types of closed syllables NOSHAREDMORA NOCMORA Light closed μ * CVC Smooth cut μμ * CVC Abrupt cut μμ * * CVC
If these are indeed the correct markedness constraints in play, the only way to prefer
abrupt cut over smooth cut would be via faithfulness constraints. This would not be an
adequate solution, however, since if faithfulness constraints are required to prefer abrupt
cut over either smooth cut and light closed structures, we would predict that the less-
6 Both these rankings assume a highly-ranked MORAICCODA constraint, which requires coda consonants to be linked to moras, but may be violated in other languages if they allow codas to link directly to the syllable node (Broselow et al. 1997:64). Further constraints are required to get the Levantine Arabic pattern of context-dependent coda weight. 7 To save space in this table and following OT tableaux, I represent moraic affiliations but not syllabic affiliation. Since all forms represented are monosyllabic, the onset and moras of each representation should be assumed to be linked to a single syllable node.
43
marked light closed structure would also be allowed to surface if it was underlying;
according to the OT principle of the Richness of the Base, this must be permitted as a
potential underlying structure, so its failure to surface must be ruled out by the
constraint ranking.
This difficulty is avoided if a different set of markedness constraints are in play, including some sort of constraint that favours abruptly cut syllables over light closed syllables. A likely possibility for this is a different formulation of the weight-by-position constraint, in such a way that a coda only fulfils the weight-by-position constraint if it has an independent mora.8 I do not have a precise formulation for this constraint, and will simply term it W-BY-P. Such a constraint, in combination with appropriate
faithfulness constraints, can produce a hierarchy where smoothly and abruptly cut
closed syllables can surface, but light closed syllables are excluded. Morén’s (2001:27–
28) MAXLINK-MORA and DEPLINK-MORA constraints, which forbid the deletion or
addition of links between moras and segments and not just the deletion or addition of
moras, are appropriate as faithfulness constraints in action here, since they can penalize
the addition of a moraic link creating abrupt cut from a smooth cut structure or the
deletion of a moraic link creating smooth cut from an abrupt cut structure, even when
9 the total number of moras remains the same. I will also retain NOSHAREDMORA, as a
8 Alternatively, there could be a constraint preferring heavy syllables. As discussed in above section 1.2 of this chapter, it is not possible to analyze syllable cut languages as having an absolute requirement that syllables be heavy, since open smoothly cut syllables are light; however, it is still possible for there to be a preference for heavy syllables, which cannot be satisfied in the case of open smoothly cut syllables (due perhaps to a prohibition against bimoraic vowels, which must be active in any case). 9 It should be made clear that MAXLINK-MORA and DEPLINK-MORA are violated when a mora and link together are deleted or added, in addition to when a link is added or deleted to an already-present mora. Alternatively, there could be a constraint preferring heavy syllables.
44
plausible constraint penalizing mora-sharing structures and dispreferring abrupt cut to
smooth cut. In order to avoid a light closed structure, W-BY-P must be ranked above
DEPLINK-MORA, as in the tableau in 29.
(29) W-BY-P >> DEPLINK-MORA eliminates light closed structures Input: μ W-BY-P DEPLINK-MORA
CVC a. μ Light closed *! CVC b. μμ Smooth cut * CVC c. μμ Abrupt cut * CVC
Here, the faithful candidate a, with a light closed syllable, violates the highly-ranked
markedness constraint W-BY-P. The unfaithful candidates b and c, with smooth and
abrupt cut respectively, satisfy this higher constraint, though they violate the lower-
ranked faithfulness constraint DEPLINK-MORA; thus, one of them will be optimal. The
choice between them will be determined by other constraints.
In order to ensure that abruptly cut structures can surface, and are not replaced by smoothly cut structures, MAXLINK-MORA must be ranked above NOSHAREDMORA,
as shown in 30.
45
(30) MAXLINK-MORA >> NOSHAREDMORA preserves abrupt cut structures Input: μμ MAXLINK-MORA NOSHAREDMORA
CVC a. μμ Smooth cut *! CVC b. μμ Abrupt cut * CVC
Here, the smoothly cut candidate a violates the high-ranked faithfulness constraint
MAXLINK-MORA and is eliminated, allowing the faithful but more marked candidate b to surface despite violating NOSHAREDMORA.
The two rankings established above, W-BY-P >> DEPLINK-MORA and
MAXLINK-MORA >> NOSHAREDMORA, must be combined in such way that
NOSHAREDMORA is below both faithfulness constraints, though the relative ranking of the faithfulness constraints cannot be determined. This will cause a structure with a mora-sharing coda to surface as abrupt cut, while a structure with a coda that does not share a mora will surface as smooth cut. If the coda is not underlyingly weight-bearing,
W-BY-P will cause it to become weight-bearing. In the following tableaux I demonstrate that structures without weight-bearing codas underlyingly will become smoothly cut if the vowel has an independent mora and abruptly cut if the vowel shares a mora with the coda. In 31 I show that if the vowel has an independent mora underlyingly, smooth cut will surface:
46
(31) Non-mora-sharing structure surfaces as smooth cut Input: μ W-BY-P DEPLINK- MAXLINK NOSHARED MORA -MORA MORA CVC a. μ Nonmoraic coda *! CVC b. μ Mora-sharing *! * * CVC c. μμ Smooth cut * CVC d. μμ Abrupt cut **! * CVC
Here, the faithful candidate a and candidate b are eliminated by the high-ranked
W-BY-P. Smoothly cut candidate c satisfies W-BY-P by violating DEPLINK-MORA only once, while abruptly cut candidate d has an additional unnecessary violation of this constraint, so candidate c wins.
In 32 I show that in the case of an underlying representation where the vocalic mora is shared, abrupt cut will surface:
47
(32) Mora-sharing structure surfaces as abrupt cut Input: μ W-BY-P DEPLINK- MAXLINK NOSHARED MORA -MORA MORA CVC a. μ Light closed *! * CVC b. μμ Smooth cut * *! CVC c. μμ Abrupt cut * * CVC
Here, the faithful candidate a is eliminated by W-BY-P; DEPLINK-MORA must be
violated by both remaining candidates, so that another mora can be added to the
syllable. The competition between candidates b and c is resolved by MAXLINK-MORA,
which eliminates smoothly cut candidate b due to its deletion of the link between the
consonant and the underlyingly shared mora. Thus, the abruptly cut candidate c is
optimal.
Drawing back from the particular formalism of Optimality Theory, I will restate
the main ideas of this section. In syllable cut systems, mora-sharing is permitted and
occurs in underlying representations, but weight-by-position is active. Abruptly cut
syllables are permitted because they comply with weight-by-position, while light closed syllables, which are representationally simpler, are forbidden because they do not.
Abruptly cut syllables surface where mora-sharing is present in the underlying representation, and smoothly cut syllables surface where the underlying representation
does not have mora-sharing.
48
3.5 Syllable cut, mora-sharing, and schwa
As discussed above in chapter 2, section 2.3, syllable cut distinctions have been found
in syllables with full vowels but not with schwa. How can the proposed moraic account
explain the absence of abrupt cut with schwa? It has been proposed that reduced
vowels, notably schwa, are or may be nonmoraic (Kager 1990, Féry 1996:64–65, Shaw
et al. 1999; see also Piggott 1995 on nonmoraic epenthetic vowels). These proposals
deal with several syllable cut languages: Kager 1990 deals with Dutch, which is argued
to be a syllable cut language in chapter 4 below, and Féry 1996 deals with German.
Thus, a CV syllable with schwa as the nucleus would be completely moraless, as in 33a,
not simply light as in 33b.
(33) a. b.
μ
C C
Of course there is no question of a CV syllable being abruptly cut, since there is no coda present to share a mora with the vowel. But what about closed syllables with
schwa? Even if schwa does not contribute a mora, the coda will be moraic due to
weight-by-position, so that the syllable is not moraless. If the nonmoraicity of schwa is
accounted for by a restriction (in OT, a high-ranked constraint) against linking schwa to
a mora, the exclusion of abrupt cut in syllables with schwa falls out automatically.
Abrupt cut necessarily involves a mora linked to both the nucleus and the coda of a
syllable; if the nucleus may not have a mora linked to it, abrupt cut is impossible. Thus the structure for CC reduced syllables would be as in 34.
49
(34)
μ
C C
The possibilities in 35, including a mora-sharing light closed syllable (35a), a typical smooth cut structure (35b), and a typical abrupt cut structure (35c) are all excluded,
since they have schwa linked to a mora:
(35) a. b. c.
μ μ μ μ μ
C C C C C C
Thus, the moraic account of syllable cut that I am proposing can also explain the lack of cut contrasts in syllables containing schwa. The resulting non-contrastive structure in 34 is not identical to the smooth cut structure of syllables with full vowels; at the same time, it may be considered a variety of smooth cut, since there is no mora-sharing.
4. Summary
Although no adequate moraic theory approach, whether quantity- or quality-based, has previously been developed, it is nevertheless possible to develop a coherent moraic analysis of syllable cut by using mora-sharing. I have developed an analysis in which abrupt cut involves a mora underlyingly shared between the vowel and a postvocalic consonant, while smooth cut involves no such sharing; in both smoothly and abruptly cut syllables, codas gain independent moras on the surface to satisfy weight-by-position requirements. I have shown this analysis correctly accounts for the facts of syllable cut, including the requirement for abruptly cut syllables to be closed, the lightness of open
50 smoothly cut syllables, the fact that abrupt cut allows more complex codas than smooth cut, the length properties of consonants and vowels under smooth and abrupt cut, and the greater markedness of abrupt cut compared to smooth cut, as well as the lack of cut contrasts in reduced syllables. Thus, alternative theories of syllable structure are not required in order to account for syllable cut.
51
Chapter Four: Syllable cut in Modern Dutch
0. Introduction
In this chapter I show that Dutch, like closely-related German, is a syllable cut language. The full vowels of Dutch are divided into two series which differ phonetically according to the phonetic correlates of syllable cut. Importantly, the phonetic correlates are matched by the phonological correlates of syllable cut: ‘short’ vowels are not allowed in open syllables, and ‘long’ vowels create light open syllables. In section 2 I review different analyses of the Dutch vowel system that have been given, including early syllable cut analyses, quantity analyses, and quality analyses. In section 3 I provide further evidence for syllable cut in Dutch based on the patterning of schwa together with phonetically long vowels; this patterning is explainable under a syllable cut analysis, since both schwa and long vowels have smooth cut, but is problematic in a quantity or quality analysis.
1. Syllable cut in Dutch: full vowels
1.1 Phonetic properties
Dutch has two series of full vowels: a series described as a long and/or tense series and one described as short and/or lax. The long/tense series contains the vowels
[i], [y], [e], [ø], [a], [o] and [u]; I will refer to this series as Series I in order to be able to refer to it in a theory-independent way. The short/lax series, which I will refer to as
Series II, contains the vowels [], [], [œ], [], [].10 It also has the reduced vowel
10 Vowel quality derived from De Schutter 1994:446–447; he uses the symbol [] rather than [œ], but I have substituted [œ], as he places the vowel with the mid vowels rather than the high vowels (De Schutter
52 schwa, which I will discuss separately in section 3; there are also the diphthongs [i],
[œy] and [u]; however, they will not play a role in my analysis.11 These two series of full vowels notably show some of the main phonetic correlates of syllable cut: length and tenseness are correlates of smooth cut, while shortness and laxness are correlates of abrupt cut.
One more thing must be said about the phonetic properties of the two vowel series in Dutch. Series I, the so-called long/tense series, consists entirely of phonetically tense vowels, but not all of its members are consistently phonetically long: while the nonhigh vowels [e], [ø], [a] and [o] are always long, the high vowels [i], [y] and [u] are normally short, and are long only in the context before /r/.12 This fact complicates
1994:446) and describes it as ‘more open than [ø]’ (De Schutter 1994:447), and other authors, e.g., Nooteboom (1971:397) explicitly consider it to be mid [œ]. Some other authors, e.g., Moulton (1962:295) and Van Ginneken (1934:354, 359) treat this as a high vowel instead. Linguists earlier in the 20th c., at least until the 1960s, often report that some varieties of Standard Dutch make a phonemic distinction between two round back Series II vowels, a lower [] and a higher [o] or [], while in other varieties the two are allophonic, with the higher allophone occuring only before nasals (Van Wijk 1939:39, Cohen et al. 1959:13–14, Moulton 1962:294, De Rijk 1967:12); more recent works such as De Schutter 1994:446– 447 and Booij 1995:7 indicate that the phonemic distinction is mostly or completely obsolete. 11 There are also the loan vowels [], [] and [œ], which are fairly uncommon, though well enough established not to merely be sporadic foreignisms (De Groot 1931:233, 236–237; Van Wijk 1939:39; Cohen et al. 1959:23–24; Moulton 1962:295–296, 301; De Schutter 1994:447). These will be exceptional in any analysis, since they do not follow the usual correlation of length and tenseness. In a quantity analysis, they will be long, but must be additionally marked as lax to distinguish them qualitatively from [e], [o] and [ø]; this would be the only place where a feature for lax/tense is necessary. In a quality analysis, they will be lax, but must additionally have length to distinguish them from [], [] and [œ]; this would be the only place where vowel length is distinctive. In a syllable cut analysis, they would probably belong to smoothly cut syllables, with a feature for laxness as in the quantity analysis, but their distribution might affect the analysis. Information about the distribution of these vowels is hard to find, and given that they occur in relatively few words, might be inconclusive; however, they do not occur in word-final position (Moulton 1962:301, De Schutter 1994:447). 12 This distribution of phonetic length in the vowel system is a standard observation, given in e.g., Van Ginneken 1934:355, Moulton 1962:298, and Nooteboom 1971:397.
53 analyses that try to analyze Series I as long vowels and Series II as short, since phonetic length does not consistently divide the two series.
1.2 Phonological properties
To determine whether the two series of vowels are actually a manifestation of syllable cut or are instead underlyingly distinguished by quantity and quality, it is necessary to look at whether they show the structural properties of syllable cut. If the phonetic properties of syllable cut are matched by the structural properties of syllable cut, Dutch can be considered a syllable cut language. In this section I will show that the two crucial structural properties of syllable cut are found in Dutch: Series II vowels cannot occur in open syllables, and syllables with Series I vowels are light when open. This indicates that Series II vowels manifest abrupt cut and Series I vowels manifest smooth cut.
As discussed in chapter 2, section 2.2, one of the major pieces of evidence that a language has syllable cut rather than quantity is that it does not permit ‘short vowels’ in open syllables. Dutch fulfils this criterion, restricting the ‘short’ Series II vowels to closed syllables. All Series I vowels are permitted in final open syllables, as shown in the data in 36; Series II vowels, by contrast, are generally not permitted in this context
(Moulton 1962:301–302, De Rijk 1967:4–5, Trommelen 1984:19–20, 82–83).13
13 There are a handful of exceptions to this generalization, mostly borrowings, e.g., relais ‘relay’, with a final [], and squaw ‘squaw’, with a final [] (Trommelen 1984:16).
54
(36) Series I vowels in word-final position a. [i] b. [y] c. [u] die di ‘that’ nu ny ‘now’ hoe hu ‘how’ zie zi ‘see’ u y ‘you’ moe mu ‘tired’
d. [e] e. [ø] f. [o] zee ze ‘sea’ beu bø ‘fed up’ vlo vlo ‘flea’ nee ne ‘no’ sneu snø ‘disappointing’ stro stro ‘straw’
g. [a] la la ‘drawer’ na na ‘after’ (based on De Rijk 1967:4–5)
Series I vowels are also permitted in hiatus, while Series II vowels are not (Van der
Hulst 1985:59–60); this is shown in the data in 37.
(37) Series I Gloss Series II a. [hi.at] hiaat ‘hiatus’ *[h.at] b. [xa.s] chaos ‘chaos’ *[x.s] c. [kre.ol] creool ‘creole’ *[kr.ol]
The fact that Series II vowels may not occur word-finally or in hiatus is a good
indication that they may not occur in open syllables. This is supported by patterns of
syllabification word-internally, which avoids open syllables with Series II vowels. After
an (accented) Series II vowel, a single intervocalic consonant is ambisyllabic, while
after a long vowel it is simply an onset (Van Wijk 1939:59–60, 1940a:6, Kooij
1980:62–63, Booij 1995:31–32, Schiller et al. 1997). This is shown in 38.
55
(38) a. passen ‘try on’ b. Pasen ‘Easter’ [psn] [pa.sn] (Kooij 1980:62–63)
Similarly, after a Series II vowel the first consonant of a cluster is regularly syllabified as a coda, while after a Series I vowel the first consonant of certain clusters, e.g., [st], is syllabified in the following syllable, as in the examples in 39.
(39) a. kasten ‘closets’ b. meester ‘master’ [ks.tn] [me.str] (Kooij 1980:63–64)
This confirms that Series II vowels are subject to the fundamental restriction on abruptly cut syllables, that they must be closed, by an ambisyllabic consonant if necessary. Series I vowels, of course, do not show this requirement for closure, in accordance with the hypothesis that they are the manifestation of smooth cut.
There are some complications to this. According to Kooij (1980:77, note 2), short vowels are allowed in open syllables when they are word-internal and unstressed.
At first sight this appears problematic for a syllable cut analysis of Dutch, if ‘short vowels’ are to be analyzed as vowels occurring in abruptly cut syllables, and abruptly cut syllables cannot be open. However, a closer look at the phonetic correlates of syllable cut reveals that length is a correlate of vowels under smooth cut specifically in accented syllables; smooth cut in unaccented or unstressed syllables need not be correlated with vowel length (Vennemann 2000:253). Thus, it is possible that in these cases, the vowel is in a smoothly cut syllable but is phonetically short in unstressed position. It seems clear then that according to the first test in determining whether we are dealing with a quantity language or a syllable cut language, Dutch fits the criteria for a syllable cut language.
56
The second main kind of evidence for syllable cut discussed above in chapter 2,
section 2.2 is the distribution of weight. In a syllable cut language, open syllables with
‘long vowels’ (i.e., smooth cut) are light, while all other types of syllables are heavy. In
accordance with this pattern, open syllables with Series I vowels behave as light in
Dutch, while all others behave as heavy. Kager and Zonneveld (1986:216), in a
discussion of Dutch syllabification and stress, note a pattern of stress in which open
syllables with ‘long vowels’ behave as light and all other syllables (closed syllables
with long or short vowels, including those short syllables closed by an ambisyllabic consonant) behave as heavy. The generalization is essentially the same as Vennemann’s
Penult Rule for German discussed above in chapter 2, section 2.2: antepenultimate
stress is only possible if the penultimate syllable is light by containing an open syllable
with a ‘long’ (Series I) vowel; if the syllable is closed, either by a true coda or by an
ambisyllabic consonant, it is heavy, and the stress cannot reach the antepenultimate
syllable. This is shown in 40 and 41 (based on Kager and Zonneveld 1986:216 and
Kager 1990:246).
(40) Penult: Open, with Series I vowel a. Penultimate stress b. Antepenultimate stress14 [pi.ja.ma] pyjama ‘pyjamas’ [a.li.bi] alibi ‘alibi’ [spi.na.zi] spinazie ‘spinach’ [mi.ka.do] mikado ‘mikado’ [a.ro.ma] aroma ‘aroma’ [a.na.ns] ananas ‘pineapple’ [tr.pe.do] torpedo ‘torpedo’ [tm.bo.la] tombola ‘tombola’
14 Recall that [i] (like [u] and [y]) is a Series I vowel despite being phonetically short. I indicate length on non-high Series I vowels only in stressed position.
57
Here, words with a Series I vowel in an open penultimate syllable may have
penultimate stress, as in 40a, and crucially they may also have antepenultimate stress, as
in 40b.
(41) Penult: Closed, with Series II vowel; penultimate stress a. True coda b. Ambisyllabic consonant [a.n.da] agenda ‘agenda’ [ma.rko] Marokko ‘Morocco’ [e.lk.tron] elektron ‘electron’ [ma.ksr] Makassar ‘Macassar’ [a.r.ta] aorta ‘aorta [spa.ti] spaghetti ‘spaghetti’ [ka.ln.dr] kalender ‘calendar’ [pn.tfl] pantoffel ‘slipper’
Here we see that when the penult is closed, whether with a true coda consonant as in
41a or with an ambisyllabic consonant as in 41b, the stress may be on the penultimate syllable but not on the antepenultimate syllable.
Kager and Zonneveld (1986:216) also note that open syllables with Series I vowels show further evidence of being light, in contrast to closed syllables, since word- finally, ‘stressed VC is very frequent while stressed VV is scarce: barón “baron”, bordés “steps”, galóp “gallop”, and salmiák “sel-ammoniac” [sic] vs. only a small number of recent loans, such as menú “menu” and buró “bureau”.’
Thus, Dutch also behaves as a syllable cut language according to the second diagnostic for distinguishing syllable cut and quantity: open syllables with phonetically long vowels behave as light, in contrast to other types of syllables, which are heavy.
Combining the results from both diagnostics, there is strong evidence that Dutch is a syllable cut language, since it both restricts ‘short vowels’ to closed syllables, and counts open syllables with ‘long vowels’ as light. Since this has not always been recognized, I will now review how prior analyses of Dutch have tried to handle the
58
Dutch vowel system. After that, I will turn to some other properties of syllable cut in
Dutch, looking particularly at the position of schwa.
2. Previous analyses of the Dutch vowel system
The basic opposition between the two series of the Dutch vowel system has traditionally been considered one of quantity, and this analysis has continued to be maintained by some scholars. Other scholars have analyzed it instead as qualitative opposition between tense and lax vowels. Some pre-generative linguists have also discussed the Dutch vowel system in terms of syllable cut or explicitly equivalent terms. In the recent syllable cut revival, several scholars have referred to Dutch as a syllable cut language
(e.g., Vennemann 2000:258, Murray 2000:619, Auer et al. 2002:3); however, no in- depth analysis of Dutch as a syllable cut language has been done since the refinement of the concept of syllable cut.
2.1 Early syllable cut analyses and related proposals
Van Ginneken (1934) includes an analysis of the Dutch vowel system within an early syllable cut framework. He uses the terms gedekt ‘covered’ and ongedekt ‘uncovered’; this is a reference to the necessary schielijke dekking ‘quick covering’ of the Series II vowels by a following consonant (Van Ginneken 1934:354). He explicitly equates his terms with Sievers’ terms for syllable cut: ‘Met gedekt en ongedekt bedoel ik wat
Sievers “die scharfgeschnittenen und die schwachgeschnittenen Vocale” of “die Vocale mit scharfgeschnittenem und schwachgeschnittenem Akzent” genoemd heeft’ (Van
59
Ginneken 1934:354, note 1).15 He considers the covered vowels to be the marked or
more complex member of the opposition, in contrast to quantity languages such as
Latin, where the long member is marked:
[...] de ongedekte klinker aa bestaat uit één enkel phonologisch element: de aa; en de gedekte klinker is dubbel of bestaat uit twee elementen (aa + dekking). Om het belang hiervan duidelijker te maken vergelijken wij even het Latijnsche of Oud-Germaansche klinkerstelsel [...]. Hier bestaat echter het verschil [...] uit het karakteristiek attribuut der lange quantiteit [...]. In het Latijn is de lange â dus dubbel en bestaat phonologisch uit de korte a plus de lange quantiteit, maar in het Nederlandsch is het juist omgekeerd. Bij ons is de gedekte a de dubbele, die phonologisch uit een aa plus medeklinkerdekking bestaat (Van Ginneken 1934:354–355).16
Van Ginneken thus observes that Dutch shows the markedness properties of smooth and
abrupt cut, as well as that abruptly cut syllables must be closed; the implications of
syllable cut for weight, however, do not form part of his analysis.
The main early work on syllable cut in Dutch seems to have been done by Van
Wijk (1939, 1940a,b, 1941). Following Trubetzkoy, he characterizes the vowel of
abruptly cut syllables as being broken off by a consonant at the point of greatest
intensity; as a result, the vowels of abrupt cut cannot occur in open syllables (Van Wijk
1939:35, 39; see Trubetzkoy 1962:176, 196). When an abruptly cut vowel is followed
15 ‘By covered and uncovered I mean what Sievers has called “the smoothly cut and the abruptly cut vowels” or “the vowels with smoothly cut and abruptly cut accent.”’ 16 ‘[...] the uncovered vowel aa [i.e., [a]] consists of one single phonological element: the aa; and the covered vowel is double or consists of two elements (aa + covering). To make the significance of this clearer, let us compare the Latin or Old German vowel system [...]. Here however the difference consists [...] of the characteristic feature of long quantity [...]. In Latin the long â is thus double and consists phonologically of the short a plus long quantity, but in Dutch it is exactly reversed. For us the covered a is the double one, which phonologically consists of an aa plus consonantal covering.’
60
by an intervocalic consonant, the consonant is ambisyllabic (Van Wijk 1939:59, 109–
110). Vowel quality and length, as well as consonant ambisyllabicity, are dependent
properties of syllable cut, and are not phonologically relevant (Van Wijk 1939:38–39,
59–60, 76; Van Wijk 1940a:6–7, 9). He also classifies schwa as obligatorily having
smooth cut (Van Wijk 1939:39–40; see also Van Wijk 1939:109). Van Wijk (1940a:10–
12) goes further and argues that not only quantity, but also the way in which a
consonant cuts off the preceding vowel is dependent on a type of ‘intonation,’ and it is
this intonation which is the true distinctive property.
As evidence for a difference between quantity and syllable cut, he provides
examples from Dutch dialects that have some degree of quantity contrast in smoothly
cut vowels, alongside a contrast between abrupt and smooth cut. For example, the
Goerees dialect (a Zealandic dialect) has contrasts between abruptly cut ville ‘(wij, zij)
villen/(we, they) skin, peel’, short smoothly cut vıel ‘vijl/file’, and long smoothly cut
vıel ‘(wij, zij) vielen/(we, they) fell’; only the smoothly cut ones can occur in open
syllables (Van Wijk 1940b:232).17 It is worth noting that this is not historically the same mixed system of quantity and syllable cut that followed degemination and preceded
OSL in the early Middle English of the Ormulum, as Murray (2000) demonstrates (as discussed in section 2 of chapter 5 below), and that may have been an intermediate stage in the development of the Dutch quantity system, as discussed below in chapter 7, although structurally it is the same three-way contrast between abrupt cut, smooth cut with short vowels, and smooth cut with long vowels. In the cases of the Ormulum and the potential intermediate Dutch stage, a quantity contrast occurs in open smoothly cut
17 Van Wijk appears to be using ie as a Dutch orthography-based representation of [i].
61
syllables when a cut contrast has developed but quantity in open syllables has not yet
been lost: long vowels are still bimoraic and short vowels still monomoraic. In the
Goerees case, the short smoothly cut vowel derives from West Germanic long //, which
diphthongized in Standard Dutch, while the long smoothly cut vowel derives from the
West Germanic diphthong /eo/, which monophthongized in Standard Dutch as well and
is the main source of Standard Dutch [i] (Van Wijk 1941:20). Finally, Van Wijk
(1940b) argues that syllable cut in Dutch and the other Germanic languages was a result
of reinterpretation after open syllable lengthening: the lack of short vowels in open
syllables caused the distinction to be reanalyzed as one of cut rather than quantity;
problems with this account of the development of syllable cut are discussed below in
chapters 5 and 6.
Heeroma 1959 is not strictly speaking a syllable cut analysis; Heeroma rejects
the syllable cut categories scherp gesneden ‘abruptly cut’ and zwak gesneden ‘smoothly cut’, apparently considering them unscientific, and prefers to classify vowels as gedekt
‘covered’ and vrij ‘free’ (Heeroma 1959:297). He rejects any categorization of syllables
into categories of closed and open, as well as categories of cut, on the basis that
syllables are essentially rhythmic units, for which peaks can be defined but not
boundaries (Heeroma 1959:297–298). His analysis is related to syllable cut, however, in
that he defines gedekt and vrij in terms of whether a vowel (not a syllable) is ‘closed off’ by a following consonant:
Ik keer terug tot de definite van de ‘vrije’ en ‘gedekte’ vocalen. Het heeft m.i. weinig zin om de vocaal in de eerste syllabe van laten te karakterisieren als een vocal die in een open lettergreep staat (waarbij de syllabegrens tussen de aa en de t ligt) en de a van latten als en vocaal in gesloten syllabe (waarbij de syllabegrens in de t ligt). Maar daarom kan men de ‘vrije’ vocaal mijnentwege
62
nog wel ‘open’ noemen en de ‘gedekte’ vocaal ‘gesloten’. Voor mijn taalgevoel wordt de a van latten inderdaad consonantisch ‘afgesloten’, d.w.z. zijn articulatie moet noodzakelijk eindigen met de articulatie van en consonant, en hij kan dus nooit functioneren als laatste foneem van een woord. De aa van laten wordt daarentegen niet consonantisch ‘afgesloten’, al kan er wel een consonant op volgen. (Heeroma 1959:298).18
This analysis, depending as it does on the relation between a vowel and a following
consonant, is closer to a syllable cut analysis than to a quantity analysis or a quality
analysis. Like Van Ginneken, Heeroma recognizes the importance of consonants
following Series II vowels, but does not note the weight facts that are also a crucial part
of the syllable cut system of Dutch.
2.2 Quantity-based analyses
The two series of Dutch vowels have traditionally been called ‘long’ and ‘short’.
Despite the fact that the high vowels in Series I are not phonetically long, a
considerable number of scholars have continued to prefer length-based analyses over
vowel quality or syllable cut based ones, including Moulton (1962), Trommelen (1984),
Van der Hulst (1985), Kager and Zonneveld (1986), Kager (1990), and Booij (1995).
Moulton (1962:299–300) rejects the syllable cut hypothesis, claiming that it is
unsupported by the evidence, particularly claiming that Series II vowels do not induce
18 ‘I return to the definition of the “free” and “covered” vowels. In my view, it makes little sense to characterize the vowel in the first syllable of laten as a vowel that stands in an open syllable (whereby the syllable boundary lies between the aa and the t) and the a of latten as a vowel in a closed syllable (whereby the syllable boundary lies in the t). But in my opinion one can still call the “free” vowel “open” and the “covered” vowel ”closed.” According to my linguistic intuition, the a of latten is indeed consonantally “closed off,” that is, its articulation must necessarily finish with the articulation of a consonant, and it can thus never function as the last phoneme of a word. The aa of laten is in contrast not consonantally “closed off,” although a consonant may follow it.’
63
ambisyllabicity, as claimed by syllable cut analyses. He considers a tense/lax analysis,
but rejects it on the basis that the tense/lax distinction is only an arbitrary one (Moulton
1962:300–301). He develops a length-based analysis in which the vowels [e], [ø], [a] and [o] are phonemically long, [], [], [œ], [] and [] are phonemically short, and [i],
[y] and [u] are neither short nor long (Moulton 1962:307–310). Moulton observes many of the structural properties differentiating the classes of vowels, but does not attempt to explain the motivation for them. He does not discuss the behaviour of the two classes with respect to weight.
The quantity-based analyses of Trommelen (1984), Van der Hulst (1985), Kager
and Zonneveld (1986), Kager (1990), and Booij (1995) all attempt to account for some
of the structural facts using some variant of a syllable structure template requiring a
complex rhyme. Trommelen (1984:79–90, 132–141) proposes that Dutch rhymes consist
of an obligatory nucleus and an optional coda. The nucleus must contain a
[-consonantal] segment, i.e., a vowel, and the rhyme must additionally contain another
[+sonorant] segment, which may be associated with the nucleus (as in a diphthong or
long vowel) or with the coda (if it is a sonorant consonant). In order to account for
syllables with a short vowel closed by an obstruent, Trommelen is forced to say that the
codas of these syllables actually contain a null sonorant preceding the coda obstruent
(Trommelen 1984:84–86).
Van der Hulst (1985:57–58) proposes that the constituent that must be
bipositional is the nucleus itself, not the rhyme. Since a short vowel can only fill one
position, it must be followed by a consonant which can be linked to the second nucleus
position.
64
Kager and Zonneveld (1986:200) and Booij (1995:25–26), like Trommelen
(1984), propose that the rhyme, but not necessarily the nucleus, must be bipositional.
Unlike Trommelen, they place no sonorancy restriction on the second element of the rhyme; a short vowel followed by a coda obstruent satisfies their template without any further adjustments. Similarly, Kager (1990:241–242) proposes a moraic theory account in which syllables must be minimally bimoraic.
All these template accounts attempt to explain two things: first, the requirement for short vowels to be followed by a consonant, by saying that a long vowel fills an obligatory position, which must be filled by a consonant in the case of a short vowel.
Second, they try to explain the fact (which I will discuss below in section 3 in relation to schwa) that greater complexity is allowed in consonant clusters following a Series II vowel by saying that the first consonant of such clusters occupies a position that is unavailable after a Series I or diphthong because it is filled by the second half of the long vowel or diphthong. Although they may be successful in explaining these phonotactic facts, the proposals are problematic in several other areas. They wrongly predict that open syllables with Series I (‘long’) vowels should be bimoraic and thus heavy, although as shown in 39–40 above they are in fact light. Kager and Zonneveld
(1986:216) recognize that these open syllables are light, but have no grounded theoretical explanation for the fact. Kager (1990:245–246) simply says that Dutch is quantity-sensitive to the distinction between closed and open syllables, without tying this in to mora count, despite using a moraic theory analysis. Furthermore, most analyses that require some variant of a bipositional rhyme have difficulty accounting for the fact that schwa can occur in open syllables. Trommelen (1984) and Booij (1995:19–
65
20) attempt to account for this by saying that schwa is in fact bimoraic, while Van der
Hulst (1985) proposes that only schwa is allowed to occur in a nonbranching nucleus;
both of these are essentially stipulations attempting to force schwa to fit into an analysis
which does not easily accommodate it. I will discuss a syllable cut analysis of these
facts below in 3.3.
2.3 Quality-based analyses
An analysis of Dutch which differentiates between the two vowel series on the basis of
tenseness (Series I) and laxness (Series II) has an immediate advantage over a length
system, in that all members of Series I are tense, although not all are phonetically long.
An early quality analysis of Dutch is given by De Groot (1931:233–239). He
classifies the Series I vowels as helder ‘bright’ and the Series II vowels as dof ‘dim’,
rather than the traditional categories of long and short respectively. He considers schwa
to be an unstressed allophone of the dof vowel /œ/ (De Groot 1931:237). Length is
dependent on a vowel being helder while shortness is dependent on a vowel being dof,
and is so important that ‘na open lettergrepen met doffe klinker bij niet te snel
spreektempo in de regel een tussenlettergrepige pauze onstaat, waarin de organen zich
reeds gereed maken vor de beginmedeklinker van de volgende lettergreep: vandaar de
illusie, dat de eerste lettergreep van pannen, petten, potten, zwemmen, lissen gesloten
zou zijn’ (De Groot 1931:237).19, 20
19 ‘after open syllables with short vowels at not too fast rates of speech, as a rule, an intersyllabic pause arises, in which the organs are already preparing themselves for the initial consonant of the following syllable: from this comes the illusion that the first syllable of pannen, petten, potten, zwemmen, lissen should be closed.’
66
The analysis of Cohen et al. (1959) is presented as a quality analysis, but ends
up showing a significant resemblance to a syllable cut analysis. Cohen et al. (1959)
reject the categories of helder and dof as overly impressionistic and instead differentiate
between tense and lax vowels. They also argue that the concept of syllable cut too is
phonetically out of date, so that a tense/lax analysis is preferable. Quantity, the final
candidate for the distinction, is analyzed as dependent on quality (Cohen et al. 1959:11–
15). Cohen et al. (1959:14) argue, contrary to De Groot, that schwa contrasts with /œ/
and is its own phoneme, and that furthermore it belongs to some degree by itself, either
as a special sub-case of an extremely lax vowel, or as an ‘unarticulated’ (i.e., reduced)
vowel, in opposition to the ‘articulated’ (i.e., full) vowels, both tense and lax.
At one point, Cohen et al. (1959:84) appear to relate the restriction against word-
final lax vowels to final devoicing, on the basis that voiced consonants are also
prohibited word-finally, and also that voiced fricatives are disallowed or dispreferred
after lax vowels; however, the exact nature of the relationship between laxness and
voicelessness is not made clear. Later, Cohen et al. (1959:99–100) discuss syllable
structure and the requirement for lax vowels to occur in closed syllables in terms
unrelated to voicing. In fact, the analysis ends up resembling a syllable cut analysis,
since it involves the relationship between a vowel and the following consonant, so that
lax vowels are more closely related to a postvocalic consonant than tense vowels:
Is de klinker ongespannen, dan moet een medeklinker volgen; er hoeft echter geen medeklinker vooraf te gaan. Is de klinker gespannen, dan hoeft noch ervoor noch erachter een medeklinker te staan. We drukken dit uit door te zeggen dat in
20 De Groot (1931:237) notes that it is unclear why the helder vowels /u, y, i/ can be short without becoming dof.
67
een ongespannen lettergreep een structuurgrens ligt voor de klinker en na de laatste medeklinker, en dat in een gespannen lettergreep een structuurgrens ligt onmiddellijk voor en na de klinker [...]. Wanneer we de structuurgrens aangeven met een verticale streep, dan kan een gespannen lettergreep worden geschreven als C|V|C, en een ongespannen lettergreep als C|VC|. Het verschil tussen „gespannen” en „ongespannen” kan dus worden beschreven als een verschil in de plaats van de structuurgrens achter de klinker (Cohen et al. 1959:99).21
Thus, while Cohen et al. (1959) reject syllable cut as a category, they end up framing their quality analysis in terms very similar to those of syllable cut.
Since Cohen et al. (1959), tense/lax analyses of Dutch have also been adopted by e.g., De Rijk (1967) and Van Marle (1980), and De Schutter (1994), among others.
While tense/lax analyses appear to have the advantage over long/short analyses on phonetic grounds, they are similarly unsuccessful on structural grounds, since they make the requirement for lax vowels to be followed by consonants quite arbitrary—a requirement which falls out naturally under a syllable cut analysis.
3. Schwa and syllable cut in Dutch
In addition to full vowels, Dutch also has a reduced vowel schwa. It has been variously analyzed as an unstressed allophone of the ‘short vowel’ /œ/ that occurs in put (e.g., De
Groot 1931:237), as a distinct vowel within the class of ‘short vowels’ (e.g., Booij
1981:29–30, cited in Trommelen 1984:18), and as a separate category apart from both
21 ‘If the vowel is lax, then a consonant must follow; however, a consonant need not precede it. If the vowel is tense, then a consonant need neither precede nor follow it. We express this by saying that in a lax syllable a structural boundary lies before the vowel and after the last consonant, and that in a tense syllable a structural boundary lies immediately before and after the vowel .... If we indicate the structural boundary with a vertical line, then a tense syllable can be written as C|V|C, and a lax syllable as C|VC|. The difference between “tense” and “lax” can thus be described as a difference in the location of the structural boundary after the vowel.’
68
‘short’ and ‘long’ vowels (e.g., Heeroma 1959:300, Moulton 1962:296). Yet another
proposal is that of Trommelen (1984), who proposes that schwa is in fact a member of
the class of long vowels, and is bimoraic, based on parallels between the phonological
behaviour of schwa and ‘long vowels;’ this analysis is followed also by Booij (1995).
The parallels between schwa and Series I vowels are indeed quite striking, but I will
show that they are better explained by a syllable cut analysis, in which schwa forms a
natural class with Series I vowels based on the properties of smooth cut.
3.1 Phonotactics
Some of the major parallels between schwa and Series I vowels are phonotactic. The first is that like Series I vowels and unlike Series II vowels, schwa may occur word- finally. From a syllable cut point of view, this indicates that schwa must be permitted in a smoothly cut syllable, since only smoothly cut syllables can be open. This pattern is shown in the data in 42 (based on Trommelen 1984:20):
(42) Schwa, like Series I vowels, may occur word-finally Smooth cut Series I a. [veto] veto ‘veto’ d. [kti] aktie ‘action’ Schwa b. [vet] vete ‘feud’ e. [kt] akte ‘act’ Abrupt cut Series II c. * [vet] — — f. * [kt] *akti —
The second parallel involves the phonotactics of coda clusters. Abruptly cut syllables
(with Series II vowels) may end in a consonant cluster where the second consonant is noncoronal, but smoothly cut syllables (with Series I vowels) may not (Heeroma
1959:301–302, Cohen et al. 1959:93, Moulton 1962:303–305).22 Schwa behaves like
22 The word twaalf ‘twelve’ is a possible exception to this generalization; Moulton (1962:305) suggests that it may in fact be phonemically /twalf/, with a schwa between the final consonants, although the fact
69
smoothly cut syllables in disallowing these clusters (Trommelen 1984:19, Van der Hulst
1985:58–59, Booij 1995:23–27). This is shown in the data in 43–45.
(43) C+coronal obstruent Abrupt cut Series II a. mand [mnt] ‘basket’ Smooth cut Series I b. maand [mant] ‘month’ Schwa c. arend [arnt] ‘eagle’
(44) C+noncoronal obstruent Abrupt cut Series II a. lamp [lamp] ‘lamp’ Smooth cut Series I b. *laamp [lamp] — Schwa c. *aremp [armp] —
(45) C+noncoronal sonorant Abrupt cut Series I a. storm [strm] ‘storm’ Smooth cut Series II b. *stoorm [storm] — Schwa c. *-erm -[rm] —
Coronal sonorants are also restricted as the second consonant of a cluster following a
Series I vowel or schwa (Moulton 1962:305, Trommelen 1984:19, 68–69, Booij
1995:23–27). At a glance there appears to be a number of exceptions to this, e.g., toorn
‘wrath’, deern ‘lass’, hoorn ‘horn’, and doorn ‘thorn’, but these are often broken up by schwa and not distinguished from forms such as toren /torn/ ‘tower’; for many or even most speakers this is obligatory, and these exceptions are eliminated (Moulton
1962:305, Kager and Zonneveld 1986:207, Booij 1995:26, note 8).
that an epenthetic schwa can occur between liquids and labials or velars makes this difficult to determine. The past tense forms of some strong verbs are more robust exceptions, e.g. hielp, wierp, bedierf, verwierf, stierf, from helpen ‘to help’, werpen ‘to throw’, bederven ‘to spoil’, verwerven ‘to acquire’, and sterven ‘to die’ (Heeroma 1959:301–302, Cohen et al. 1959, Booij 1995:26, note 8).
70
Booij (1995:26–28) analyzes these as cases where a true coda can only contain
one consonant after a Series I vowel or schwa, and two consonants after a Series II
vowel; any subsequent coronal obstruents belong to an appendix, which is only permitted at the end of a prosodic word. The appendix analysis will be followed below.
3.2 Morphology
There are also two morphological alternations whose conditioning environments
distinguish between abruptly cut syllables (with Series II vowels) on the one hand, and
smoothly cut syllables (with Series I vowels and schwa) on the other. The comparative
suffix has two allomorphs, a primary allomorph -er [r], and a secondary allomorph
-der, [dr] which occurs following some r-final syllables. In smoothly cut r-final
syllables the -der allomorph is obligatory, while in abruptly cut r-final syllables both
allomorphs are allowed, as shown in the data in 46 (based on Trommelen 1984:20):
(46) Plain Comparative Gloss Smooth cut Series I a. raar [rar] raarder [rardr] ‘strange’ Schwa b. zeker [zekr] zekerder [zekrdr] ‘sure’ Abrupt cut Series II c. star [str] star(d)er [str(d)r] ‘stiff’
The other relevant morphological alternation occurs with the diminutive suffix in sonorant-final syllables. The highly productive diminutive suffix has the allomorphs -tje
[t], -pje [pj], -kje [kj], and -etje [t], of which -tje [t] is the primary allomorph
(Trommelen 1984:8–9). The relevant environments are syllables with a vowel followed
by m, n, l, or r : the allomorph -etje occurs if the syllable is abruptly cut (i.e., has a
Series II vowel), while if the syllable is smoothly cut (containing a Series I vowel or
71
schwa), the allomorphs -pje and -tje occur based on the place of articulation of the consonant. This alternation is shown in 47 (based on Trommelen 1984:20).
(47) Plain Diminutive Gloss Smooth cut Series I a. steel [stel] steeltje [stelt] ‘steel’ b. boom [bom] boompje [bompj] ‘tree’
Schwa c. lepel [lepl] lepeltje [leplt] ‘spoon’ d. boezem [buzm] boezempje [buzmpj] ‘bosom’
Abrupt cut Series II e. stel [stl] stelletje [stlt] ‘couple’ f. bom [bm] bommetje [bmt] ‘bomb’
3.3 Accounting for schwa
The fact that schwa and Series I vowels pattern together in a variety of phenomena, both in phonotactics and in morphological conditioning environments, provides strong evidence that they belong to a natural class, to the exclusion of Series II vowels. Within a quantity analysis of Dutch such as Trommelen uses, the fact that schwa and long vowels form a natural class is problematic. Trommelen interprets the facts as proving that schwa, like long vowels, must be bimoraic: ‘Given the assumption that long vowels are bimoric [sic] phonologically, it follows that schwa will have a bimoric [sic] representation, too, at least this seems the inescapable conclusion on the basis of the above phenomena. On the other hand, it is a well-known property of Dutch schwa that it distinguishes itself from all other vowels in that it never takes stress.’ (Trommelen
1984:21) To account for the stressless nature of schwa, she proposes the further complication that the first mora of schwa is empty, and thus cannot be stressed
(Trommelen 1984:66–67). This is a problematic analysis because schwa does not show
72
any of the usual characteristics of bimoraicity: bimoraicity is generally manifested in
weight and length, neither of which occurs with schwa. Trommelen’s proposal that the
first mora of schwa is empty is ad hoc and does not provide a principled explanation of
the facts. Booij’s (1995:19–20) analysis similarly gives schwa two X-slots to account
for the phonotactic facts; to account for the lack of length, he proposes that for schwa,
as for the high vowels, only the first X-slot is linked to the vowel, while the second X-
slot is unlinked and so remains phonetically unrealized but has phonotactic effects. In
order to exempt schwa from being stressed, he uses a feature [unstressable], which he freely admits to be diacritic.
Within syllable cut theory, the problematic conclusion that schwa is bimoraic is not inescapable, since Series I are not in fact bimoraic; instead, their relevant properties
are simply a surface manifestation of smooth cut. Thus, schwa is not required to be
bimoraic either. Rather, since syllables with reduced vowels always have the default
smooth cut (i.e., the lack of VC mora-sharing), they belong in the natural class of
smoothly cut syllables, together with syllables with full Series I vowels. The data in 42,
with schwa allowed in final position, is not surprising under this analysis; to the
contrary, it is predicted.
The moraic analysis of syllable cut used here also explains why more complex
codas are permitted before Series II vowels than before Series I vowels and schwa. The
data in 43–45 parallel the German facts in 25 above, where smooth cut allows a single
coda consonant (aside from coronal obstruent appendices), while abrupt cut allows two coda consonants. They can be explained in the same way: abrupt cut allows two coda consonants because one shares the mora of the vowel while the other has its own mora,
73
while smooth cut does not allow two coda consonants, since the first cannot share the
vowel of the mora, so that either each would have to have its own mora, making a
disallowed trimoraic syllable, or the two would have to share a single mora, which is also disallowed. Since reduced syllables are like smoothly cut full syllables in not having mora-sharing between the vowel and coda consonant, they are also predicted not to allow multiple coda consonants. The coronal obstruents that may occur are appendices, as argued also by Booij (1995:26–28).
The conditioning of suffix allomorphs shown in 46–47 are credibly accounted for by the moraic analysis of syllable cut proposed in chapter 3. If suffix allomorphy refers to underlying phonological representations, there is a very simple way to define natural classes which separate the words with Series I vowels and schwa from those with Series II vowels. Series II vowels represent abruptly cut syllables. A single postvocalic consonant in such syllables has an underlying moraic association (to the mora of the preceding vowel). Syllables with Series I vowels and with schwa are smoothly cut: a postvocalic consonant is not linked to the vocalic mora, but is underlyingly nonmoraic. Thus, the allomorphs occurring after smoothly cut syllables
can be defined as conditioned by a preceding nonmoraic consonant of the appropriate
sort, while the allomorphs occurring after abruptly cut syllables can be defined as
conditioned by a preceding consonant with a moraic affiliation. Thus, the comparative
allomorph -der is conditioned by a preceding nonmoraic /r/, while the allomorph -(d)er
is conditioned by a preceding moraic /r/. The diminutive allomorph -etje is conditioned
by a preceding moraic /n, m, l/ or /r/, while the allomorph -pje is conditioned by a
preceding nonmoraic /m/ and the allomorph -tje is conditioned by a preceding
74 nonmoraic /n, l/ or /r/. This is obviously not a full syllable cut analysis of the distribution of the allomorphs of the diminutive suffix (or of the comparative, for that matter), since the diminutive allomorphs -je and -kje are not discussed, nor are the other environments in which -tje is found; however, I believe I have shown that syllable cut provides a more coherent analyses of the distribution of the diminutive allomorphs following sonorant codas than is possible with a quantity analysis.
In this section I have shown that syllable cut is able to account for the striking parallels between the behaviour of Series I vowels and schwa quite naturally, without resorting to ad hoc devices such as making schwa bimoraic against the evidence of both length and stress.
4. Syllable cut and fricative voicing
There is one more phonotactic pattern in Dutch that correlates with syllable cut, and this is the voicing of the intervocalic fricatives f/v and s/z. It has often been noted (e.g.,
Heeroma 1959:300–301, Cohen et al. 1959:84, De Rijk 1967:6, Van der Hulst
1985:63–64, Booij 1995:35) that Series II vowels are almost never followed by /v/ or
/z/; Van der Hulst 1985:63 and Booij 1995:35 claim that there are only three exceptions: the loanwords puzzel [pœzl] ‘puzzle’, mazzel [mzl] ‘good luck’, and razzia [rzia]
‘raid’. There is also a weaker tendency for Series I vowels not to be followed by /s/ or
/f/, though there are quite a few exceptions to this (Heeroma 1959:300–301). This correlation of less-sonorous voiceless fricatives with abrupt cut and more-sonorous voiced fricatives with smooth cut is consistent with the tendency for abrupt cut to have less sonorous postvocalic consonants than smooth cut; however, I am not convinced that this pattern needs a synchronic explanation, since it can be explained quite readily as
75
the coincidental result of diachronic developments which I discuss below in chapter 6,
section 2.
5. The vowel system of Dutch
Having established that Dutch has a syllable cut system, how is its vowel system to be
interpreted phonologically? Until now, I have used phonetic representations of the
vowels of Dutch, transcribing the smoothly cut Series I vowels as [i], [y], [u], [e], [ø],
[o], and [a], and the abruptly cut Series II vowels as [], [], [œ], [] and [], and the reduced vowel as []. According to syllable cut, the differences between the two series of vowels must lie not in their featural properties, but in their prosodic properties—in the cut of the syllable to which they belong. Thus, the words weet /êt/ ‘know (pres.sg)’ and wet /et/ ‘law’ are segmentally identical, and distinguished only by the moraic associations of the postvocalic consonant, just as German Beet /bêt/ ‘(garden) plot’ and
Bett /bet/ ‘bed’ above in 23; this is represented in 48.
(48) a. weet b. wet
μμ μμ
e t e t
Under smooth cut, there are seven vowels, while under abrupt cut there are only five vowels; this is in accordance with the generalization that the unmarked side of a contrast has more members than the marked side, although the difference in numbers is too small to place much significance on. It appears that the vowels /i/, /e/, /ø/, /o/, and
/a/, can occur both under smooth cut as [i], [e], [ø], [o], and [a], and under abrupt cut
76
as [], [], [œ], [], and [], while the vowels /y/ and /u/ may only appear under smooth
cut, as [y] and [u], not under abrupt cut. Furthermore, the reduced vowel // may also
occur only under smooth cut, appearing as [].
6. Summary
Dutch shows all the distinguishing characteristics of syllable cut: open syllables with phonetically long/tense vowels are light, while superficially short/lax vowels may not
occur in open syllables. In addition, attempts at explaining Dutch as a quantity language
are further hindered by the fact that some of the vowels in the ‘long’ class are typically
not phonetically long; in a syllable cut analysis, where the correlation of syllable cut
and phonetic length is a tendency but not absolute, this is less problematic. A syllable
cut analysis of Dutch is further supported by the fact that schwa patterns with
phonetically long/tense vowels; this patterning is problematic for quantity analyses,
which in some cases have resorted to such unusual devices as making schwa bimoraic,
but falls out naturally from a syllable cut analysis in which reduced vowels have smooth
cut.
77
Chapter Five: Quantity change and syllable cut
0. Introduction
West Germanic was a quantity language, as is evident from the oldest recorded stages
of the West Germanic languages, Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German,
which all still organized their prosodic systems on the basis of quantity (e.g., Wright
and Wright 1925 for English). During the ‘Middle’ period, both German and English
underwent extensive changes to their prosodic systems. These changes have
traditionally been viewed in terms of lengthening and shortening within a quantity
system, a view which continues in e.g., Lahiri and Dresher (1999). In contrast,
Vennemann (2000) and Murray (2000, in press) have argued that the changes are in fact
better seen as the effects of a transition from a quantity system to a syllable cut system,
in which prosodic distinctions are primarily made not between long and short segments,
but between two categories of syllables, smoothly cut and abruptly cut. Indeed, if Old
High German was a quantity language, and German is now a syllable cut language, such
a transition must have happened at some point during the history of German. Analogous
changes also took place in Dutch; the Dutch quantity changes will be discussed in chapter 6. After introducing the quantity changes and reviewing Vennemann and
Murray’s arguments for a syllable cut analysis of them, I discuss how the transition to syllable cut plays out within the moraic framework developed in chapter 4.
1. Quantity changes in German and English
German and English underwent a similar ensemble of prosodic changes during the middle ages. I focus here on Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL) and degemination, but
78
also briefly discuss other changes. According to traditional quantity-based accounts,
OSL and degemination took place as follows.
Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL), the most prominent of the quantity changes ,
caused short vowels in open syllables to become long, as shown in 49–50.
(49) Old English Middle English Modern English a. nma nme name b. m te m te meat c. r te rote throat (Murray 2000:617)
(50) OHG Standard German Gloss a. nma Nme [nam] ‘name’ b. zla Zhl [tsal] ‘number’ (cognate with ‘tale’) c. s nu S hn [zon] ‘son’ (based on Lahiri & Dresher 1999:686)
Degemination, on the other hand, caused geminate consonants to become singletons, as shown in 51–52.
(51) Old English Middle English Modern English a. æppel /pp/ ap(p)el /p/ apple b. offren /ff/ offren /f/ offer c. sunne /nn/ sunne /n/ sun (Murray 2000:617)
(52) MHG Standard German Gloss matte /tt/ Matte /t/ [mat] ‘mat’ (Vennemann 2000:264)
In the traditional account, these changes are crucially ordered. Degemination must
follow OSL, since short vowels are not lengthened before originally geminate
79 consonants: OE crbba ‘crab’ does not degeminate to crbe and then undergo OSL to crbe (which would have become /kre b/ in Modern English).
However, OSL and degemination do not fully account for the quantity changes; other, more minor changes are also involved in the traditional account. Closed Syllable
Shortening (CSS) caused long vowels in closed syllables to become short (in words of more than one syllable), as shown in 53.
(53) Old English Middle English Modern English a. cpte kpte kept b. ffta ffte fifth c. sfte s fte mild, soft (based on Murray 2000:617)
Homorganic Cluster Lengthening (HCL) in English caused short vowels to become long before certain clusters consisting of a sonorant consonant followed by a homorganic obstruent, as shown in 54.
(54) Old English Middle English Modern English a. cld chld child b. clmban clmben climb c. gr nd gr nd ground (Murray 2000:617)
In addition, in English (but not German), a process of Trisyllabic Shortening (TSS) is traditionally understood to have caused long vowels in antepenultimate syllables to be shortened, as shown in 55.
80
(55) Old English Middle English Modern English a. hligdæ hlidei holiday b. serne s erne southern (Murray 2000:617)
There are, however, a significant number of exceptions to OSL and the other quantity change patterns in both English and German that are not accounted for by the foregoing processes. Some of these are commonly explained as the result of analogy; recent explanations of this sort are found in Lahiri and Dresher (1999) and Dresher (2000), who attempt to explain many of these exceptions in English in terms of analogy and levelling: nouns with open syllables throughout the paradigm show OSL, while nouns with open syllables in some forms and not in others underwent OSL in some forms only and were then levelled in one direction or the other, leaving some with and some without lengthened forms. This is claimed to have happened, for instance, in words such as whale (OE hwæl, pl. hwalas), where the plural is supposed to have undergone OSL and this long vowel was carried over into the singular by levelling, in contrast with words like path (OE pæ, pl. paas), where the plural would also have undergone OSL, but the effect was eliminated by levelling from the singular (Dresher 2000:50–51). This levelling is also claimed to have interacted with TSS; thus, in saddle (OE sadol) and cradle (OE cradol), OSL is supposed to have applied to both singular and plural forms, giving sdel, sdeles and crdel, crdeles, after which TSS applies to the inflected forms, giving sdel, sdeles and crdel, crdeles. Then levelling from the plural to the singular produces saddle with a short vowel, while levelling from the singular to the plural gives cradles with a long vowel (Dresher 2000:54). Explanations for some
German exceptions to OSL have been given in terms of apparently unmotivated
81
gemination of t and m, especially when followed by -el and -er; these geminates are
then supposed to have prevented OSL, e.g., OHG himil ‘sky, heaven’ > Late MHG
himmel (Lahiri and Dresher 1999:686–687, Kraehenmann 2003:77–78).
However, the explanation in terms of analogy has several problems, as pointed
out by Murray (in press). First, a large amount of marked levelling from the inflected to
uninflected forms is required, contrary to the unmarked pattern of levelling from
nominative singular to other forms. Second, the cases where TSS is supposed to have
applied are problematic, since evidence that the inflected forms were in fact trisyllabic
is lacking; both in Old English and in Middle English they are attested as bisyllabic,
with the medial vowel having been syncopated. The syllable cut explanation offered by
Murray (2000, in press) and Vennemann (2000), which avoids these problems, is
covered in section 2 below.
In addition, some of these changes are not only somewhat irregular, but also
difficult to motivate in a strictly quantitative, mora-counting framework. While the
changes based on syllable structure, that is, Open Syllable Lengthening and Closed
Syllable Shortening, can be explained by a preference for bimoraic syllables, this does
not explain the other changes.23 HCL, in particular, is problematic, since it requires the
addition of length to already-heavy closed syllables (see Vennemann 2000:266–267,
Murray 2000:626–627). Degemination likewise has no motivation in an analysis based
on a bimoraic preference, since a syllable with a geminate is already bimoraic (Murray
2000:624–627).
23 An analysis of the quantity changes in terms of a preference for bimoraic syllables is the diachronic counterpart of sychronic analyses of syllable cut languages in terms of a bimoraic requirement.
82
2. Quantity changes as a transition to syllable cut
How are the quantity changes to be understood from a syllable cut point of view? How
do these changes relate to the transition from quantity to syllable cut? A theoretically
conservative point of view might suggest that the quantity changes as formulated above are essentially correct, that once OSL happened, there was no longer any vowel length distinction in open syllables, and that at that stage long vowels were reinterpreted as smooth cut and short vowels were reinterpreted as abrupt cut; degemination then followed the reanalysis, making geminates into ambisyllabic consonants. This approach is taken by Van Wijk (1941). This perspective, while accounting for the transition from a quantity system to a syllable cut system, does not give us any insight into the quantity changes themselves, either into their motivation or into the causes of their irregularities, since it assumes the vowel quantity changes were strictly prior to the development of syllable cut and thus operate on the same quantity basis as the traditional analysis. This approach also requires the traditional assumption that degemination followed OSL, which Murray (2000) argues against for English, as discussed below.
Murray (2000, in press) and Vennemann (2000) take a different approach. They argue that the quantity changes are not the cause but rather the consequence of the transition from quantity to syllable cut. The basics of Vennemann’s and Murray’s analysis of the quantity changes are as follows. Initially there was no syllable cut distinction; all syllables, whether open or closed, with long vowels or short vowels, had the default smooth cut.24 Then syllable cut was phonologized, and all syllables took on
24 Or, possibly, abrupt cut existed on some syllables but only in certain environments, and was a conditioned and non-distinctive surface property.
83
one cut or the other. Various factors influenced the cut which a syllable adopted:
whether a syllable was open or closed, the sonority of the postvocalic consonant, the
length of the vowel (phonetic as well as phonological), and the tightness of the phonetic
bond between a consonant and the following vowel. According to Vennemann’s
(2000:262) Correlation Default, given in 56, open syllables prefer smooth cut while closed syllables prefer abrupt cut:
(56) CORRELATION DEFAULT: Everything else being equal, the preferred correlation of syllable structure and syllable cut is: smooth cut in open syllables, abrupt cut in closed syllables.
This is the basis of the changes traditionally considered OSL and CSS. For the most
part, when syllable cut developed, open syllables maintained smooth cut and closed
syllables developed abrupt cut. This did not involve any actual lengthening or
shortening, since syllable cut and quantity are entirely separate contrasts. When length
contrasts were later lost, and only the syllable cut contrasts remained, the smoothly cut
vowels in open syllables (whether originally long or short) were phonetically long, and
the abruptly cut vowels in closed syllables were phonetically short. If the phonetic
length associated with syllable cut is mistaken for quantity, this appears to be
lengthening in open syllables and shortening in closed syllables. Since geminates create
closed syllables, the syllable preceding a geminate consonant also adopted abrupt cut.
When other things were not equal, syllables could develop cuts contrary to the
correlation default. Low-sonority postvocalic consonants favour abrupt cut, while highly
sonorous postvocalic consonants favour smooth cut; thus, short vowels in open syllables
preceding the low-sonority consonant /t/ frequently acquired abrupt cut, e.g., MHG gte
84
became Standard German Gtte (i.e., /at/) (Vennemann 2000:264). The preference for
smooth cut before highly sonorous postvocalic consonants is involved in HCL: before
these clusters beginning with high-sonority consonants, smooth cut was preferred;
similarly, in Modern German, some syllables have transitioned from abrupt cut to
smooth cut before the most sonorous consonant, r (Vennemann 2000:264–265, Murray,
in press). Thus, syllable cut provides a motivation for HCL, which was problematic in a
mora-counting approach.
In addition, since smooth cut favours phonetically long vowels and abrupt cut
favours phonetically short vowels, contexts in which vowels are particularly short
favoured the adoption of abrupt cut. For example, high vowels are phonetically shorter
than low and mid vowels, and in English, open syllables with short high vowels almost
always adopted abrupt cut rather than smooth cut; thus OE drven ‘driven’ became
abruptly cut driven, a process which Murray (in press) calls High Vowel Trimming.
This change is problematic for a mora-counting analysis, since while the resulting form
with an ambisyllabic consonant is bimoraic and thus satisfies a bimoraic minimum,
mora-count provides no explanation for why ambisyllabicity is preferred to OSL. In a
few instances, high vowels do adopt smooth cut, in which case they also undergo
lowering to mid vowels, e.g., OE wicu > week25 (Murray, in press); this will be
relevant to the discussion of Dutch later on. Trisyllabic Shortening, if it took place in
English (which Murray questions) can be attributed to the same factor as High Vowel
25 The high vowel in the Modern English form is of course a product of the Great Vowel Shift, and thus represents a Middle English mid vowel.
85
Trimming: vowels are shorter in words with more syllables, and this shortness would
favour smooth cut (Murray, in press).
Finally, another factor involved in the development of syllable cut was the tightness of the bond between an onset and a following nucleus. This bond, which
Vennemann (1988:279) terms the body bond, is affected by several factors. Two of these factors are particularly relevant (Murray, in press). First, the bond is tighter in stressed syllables than in unstressed ones. Second, the tightness of the bond increases with the degree of nucleability of the nuclear segment; nucleability decreases from vowels to liquids and from liquids to fricatives, for example (Vennemann 1988:277–
278, Murray, in press). When this bond is weak, as in the case of syllabic consonants, the onset is likely to be pulled into the preceding syllable, which develops abrupt cut; e.g., sâd(e)l > sadl. This circumvents the requirement for TSS and particularly for
marked levelling in words like saddle (Murray, in press). It can also explain the German
data sometimes attributed to spontaneous gemination, in words like OHG hmil > NHG
Himmel ‘sky, heaven’ and OHG stel > NHG Sattel ‘saddle’ without resorting to
unmotivated gemination: abrupt cut developed preceding a consonant followed by a
syllabic consonant, due to the weak bond of onsets to following syllabic consonants; in
the case of words like Sattel, where the medial consonant is t, this is aided by the
preference of low-sonority consonants for abrupt cut. Taken together, the syllable cut
explanations account for both the irregularities of the quantity changes and the
motivations of these changes that were problematic in quantity accounts.
As discussed in section 3 below, I take the development of abrupt cut to be an
innovation, but not the development of smooth cut; smooth cut was already present, and
86 the innovation of abrupt cut simply made it phonologically relevant. Thus, from Murray
(in press), I take only the cases of ‘trimming’ (i.e., development of abrupt cut) as actual developments, and the cases of ‘smoothing’ (i.e., development of smooth cut) simply as cases in which no development occurred. After smooth and abrupt cut were phonologized, the quantity distinctions began to be lost. Not all were lost simultaneously; according to Murray’s analysis of the Ormulum, vowel quantity in closed syllables and consonant quantity were lost in Middle English before vowel quantity in open syllables was lost, as discussed below. It is quite possible, however, that quantity distinctions were lost in different sequences in other languages (e.g.,
German and Dutch) than in Middle English, and this matter requires further investigation.
In a syllable cut analysis of this type, the loss of vowel length is interesting, since it shows different changes on the phonetic and phonological levels. In the following discussion I use the terms phonetically short and long to refer to durational properties of vowels, and the terms phonologically short and long to refer to representational properties—specifically, whether a vowel is monomoraic or bimoraic respectively. In abruptly cut syllables, things are straightforward. Abruptly cut vowels tend to be phonetically short as well as phonologically short, so the loss of long vowels under abrupt cut straightforwardly produced phonetically and phonologically short vowels. In smoothly cut syllables, however, things are less simple. Smooth cut prefers vowels that are phonetically long. The maintenance of vowel length in open syllables resulted in a distinction between smoothly cut vowels that were both phonetically and phonologically long, in opposition to vowels that were both phonetically and
87
phonologically short. The loss of length distinction here favours the phonetically long
vowels, but makes them phonologically short (i.e., monomoraic). The mismatched
merger that results is shown in 57.
(57) Pre-OSL Post-OSL μ Short: V [V] μ V Short/long contrast neutralized μμ [V:] Long: V [V:]
Thus, on the phonetic level, short vowels are lengthened, but on the phonological level,
long vowels are shortened by being made monomoraic. It might be said that
phonetically, OSL is indeed Open Syllable Lengthening, but that phonologically it is
rather Open Syllable Lightening.
As mentioned above, Murray (2000) shows that in English, degemination
predated OSL, contrary to the requirements of a quantitative analysis of the Middle
English changes, and thus shows that syllable cut is necessary to adequately account for
them. He shows that the early Middle English of the Ormulum (written in the Northeast
Midlands ca. 1180) represents a transitional stage with both syllable cut and quantity
properties. In closed syllables, only syllable cut is relevant, but in open syllables (which by definition have smooth cut), a contrast between long and short vowels persists.
Evidence for this comes from both orthography and metre.
88
Orm, the author of the Ormulum, developed his own idiosyncratic but highly
consistent orthography, the most notable property of which is the extensive use of
double consonant graphs. He also wrote in a poetic metre which involved a distinction
between light and heavy syllables. Orm’s double consonant graphs always follow a
short vowel, and have sometimes been interpreted as indicators of vowel shortness;
however, metrical evidence shows that not all short vowels are followed by a double
consonant graph. Instead, double consonant graphs only follow short vowels in closed
syllables (e.g., loff ‘praise’ < OE lf, fasste ‘quickly’ < OE fæste), including those
originally closed by a geminate consonant (e.g., sunne ‘sun’ < OE snne). Murray
(2000) argues that Orm’s orthography is in fact marking not vowel shortness, but abrupt cut; short vowels in open syllables (in e.g., sne ‘son’ < OE snu) are not marked by double consonants, since they are necessarily smoothly cut. Murray (2000) further argues that degemination must already have taken place by the time of Orm’s writing: geminate consonants no longer existed, but where geminates were still written by orthographic convention, abrupt cut had developed. This provided Orm with an opportunity to reinterpret written double consonants as indicators of abrupt cut, which he applied highly consistently throughout his writing, frequently in places where there was no etymological geminate consonant (e.g., keppte ‘kept’). If geminates still existed, such extension would be unlikely and counterintuitive.
As mentioned above, metrical evidence shows that Orm’s language still distinguished long and short vowels in open syllables; thus, it had a mixed system of quantity and syllable cut. Orm also sometimes, though not consistently, indicated vowel length diacritically: short vowels in open syllables could be indicated with a curl, while
89
long vowels in open syllables, as well as closed smoothly cut syllables, could be
indicated with an acute accent (Murray 2000:646–647).26 Under the traditional view, a
dialect with degemination but not OSL is inherently contradictory, since OSL must
precede degemination. However, under Murray’s syllable cut analysis, this is not
problematic. A word like OE crabba /krbba/ ‘crab’ first gains abrupt cut, becoming
/crabb/. Then it undergoes degemination to /crab/, which would have been Orm’s
form. Since so-called OSL is actually the loss of length distinctions in smoothly cut
syllables, it does not apply to the abruptly cut syllable in crabba, and unwanted mergers
are avoided.
3. The representation of quantity changes
The development of a syllable cut system from a quantity system requires two crucial
components: the development of a syllable cut contrast and the loss of the inherited
quantity contrast. In this section I discuss the manner of representation of these changes.
Murray (in press) avoids formally representing the development of syllable cut
and the loss of quantity, but speaks of both smooth and abrupt cut as being added to the
system. Murray (2000) and Vennemann (2000) represent the development of syllable
cut using Vennemann’s theory of Nuclear Phonology. In this theory, as discussed above
in chapter 3, section 2.2, a syllable is made up of an energy contour consisting of a
26 This distribution of diacritics, with closed smoothly cut syllables (deriving from original long vowels or from HCL) marked the same way as long (i.e., bimoraic) vowels in open syllables rather than short (i.e., monomoraic) vowels in open syllables suggests that vowel length (bimoraicity) may not yet have been entirely lost in closed syllables either; perhaps it was non-distinctive, since it had become dependent on the phonologically more important syllable cut opposition, but remained as a conditioned property. Quite possibly bimoraicity of smoothly cut vowels was lost simultaneously in closed and open syllables, but is simply harder to see in closed syllables.
90
crescendo and a decrescendo. Segments are linked to timing units, which in turn are
linked to the crescendo and decrescendo. Quantity contrasts are represented by the
number of timing units linked to a segment, while syllable cut is represented by the
nature of the links between timing units and the energy contour; if the nucleus is linked
to both the crescendo and decrescendo, the syllable has smooth cut, while nucleus is
linked only to the crescendo, and the decrescendo is linked to a coda consonant, the
syllable has abrupt cut (Vennemann 1994:13–14). Since smooth cut is the default
unmarked cut, which presumably exists where there is no contrast (Vennemann
1994:23–25), the development of syllable cut essentially consists in the development of
abrupt cut and a contrast between abrupt and smooth cut. There is no such thing as the
development of smooth cut, which has always been present, but the development of
abrupt cut gives it something to contrast with and thus makes it phonologically relevant.
Thus, there was no representational change in the development of MHG nme
into NHG Nâme ‘name’, as shown in 58, although the loss of quantity contrasts in open
smoothly cut syllables does involve phonetic lengthening:
(58) Middle High German: short vowel Standard German: smooth cut a. nme b. Nâme
< > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | n a m n a m [nam] [nam] (based on Vennemann 2000:263)
91
The development of abrupt cut, by contrast, required the loss of association between the
vowel and the decrescendo. In originally closed syllables, this loss of association was
the only development, as shown in 59.
(59) Old English: short vowel Orm’s early Middle English: abrupt cut a. fæste b. fasste
< > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | | | f æ s t e f æ s t [fæste] [fæst]
(example from Murray 2000:648; representation mine)
In originally open syllables which gained abrupt cut for other reasons (e.g., being followed by the low-sonority consonant t), the decrescendo had to be additionally associated with the following consonant, creating an ambisyllabic segment, as in 60.
(60) Middle High German: short vowel Standard German: abrupt cut a. gte b. Gatte
< > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | g a t g a t [at] [at] (based on Vennemann 2000:264)
I do not use Venneman’s Nuclear Phonology, but rather the moraic theory analysis proposed in chapter 4 above. In this system, quantity is represented in the usual moraic way: short vowels are monomoraic and long vowels bimoraic, while geminate
92 consonants are underlyingly moraic and single consonants underlyingly nonmoraic
(though codas become moraic on the surface due to weight-by-position requirements).
Syllable cut, involving both vowels and consonants, is represented in a different way: in abruptly cut syllables, the mora of the nucleus is shared with a postvocalic consonant
(which may additionally have its own mora due to weight-by-position requirements), while in smoothly cut syllables, the nucleus does not share a mora.
In my system of moraic representations, the development of syllable cut still involves only the development of abrupt cut on certain syllables, which come to contrast with the surviving smoothly cut syllables. In smoothly cut syllables, nothing has changed phonologically, as shown in 61.
(61) Middle High German: short vowel Standard German: smooth cut a. nme b. Nâme μ μ n a m n a m [nam] [nam]
In syllables that developed abrupt cut, an association developed between the vowel and a following consonant, as shown in 62.
(62) Old English: short vowel Orm’s early Middle English: abrupt cut a. fæste b. fasste μ μ μ μ f æ s t e f a s t [fæste] [fæst]
93
If the abrupting consonant was not initially moraic, it was forced to be so by weight-by-
position; the development of ambisyllabicity and concomitant moraicity is shown in 63.
(63) Middle High German: short vowel Standard German: abrupt cut a. gte b. Gatte μ μ μ g a t g a t [at] [at]
The loss of quantity distinctions is of course also an important part of the transition from quantity to syllable cut, and its representation is also relevant. In Nuclear
Phonology, the loss of long vowels and geminate consonants in each case involves the loss of a timing point associated with the decrescendo. This is shown in 64 for long vowels and in 65 for geminate consonants:
(64) Middle High German: long vowel Standard German: smooth cut a. bne b. Bôhne
< > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | |
b o n b o n [bon] [bon] (based on Vennemann 2000:263)
94
(65) Middle High German: Hypothetical stage Standard German: short vowel, geminate abrupt cut, geminate abrupt cut, ambisyllabicity a. mtte b. matte c. Matte
< > < > < > < > < > < >
| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
m a t m a t m a t [matt] [matt] [mat] (based on Vennemann 2000:264; intermediate stage added)
In the case of geminate consonants, abrupt cut developed first, and then degemination occurred, leading to an ambisyllabically closed syllable.
In the moraic system of representations used here, the loss of vowel length is treated similarly: it involves the loss of a mora, rather than a timing point, as in 66.
(66) Middle High German: long vowel Standard German: smooth cut a. bne b. Bôhne μ μ μ b o n b o n [bon] [bon]
Degemination, however, must be handled rather differently in moraic theory than in
Nuclear Phonology. Moraic theory does not represent ambisyllabic and geminate
consonants differently; both are represented as consonants that form the onset of one
syllable and the coda of the preceding syllable. Thus, on the surface, all that happens to
a word with an original geminate is that it gains a link to the vocalic mora, creating
abrupt cut, as shown in 67.
95
(67) Middle High German: Standard German: short vowel, geminate abrupt cut, ambisyllabicity a. mtte b. Matte μ μ μ μ m a t m a t [matt] [mat]
The representation in 67b covers both the period when abrupt cut had developed but degemination had not yet happened, and the period, as in modern Standard German, when degemination has happened. However, although the surface representation does not change, an important change happens at the level of the underlying representation, which removes the distinctiveness of gemination or ambisyllabicity. At the quantity stage, geminate consonants are underlyingly associated with their own moras (68a), in contrast to single consonants (whether onsets (68b) or codas (68c)), which are represented nonmoraically; this is shown in 68.
(68) a. MHG b. MHG c. OE mtte nme fæste μ μ μ μ μ m a t n a m f æ s t e [matt] [nam] [fæste]
Non-geminate codas become moraic by weight-by-position, and syllabic structure is
created for the surface form. In the syllable cut stage, however, abrupt cut has become
phonologically relevant and is represented in the underlying forms; forms specified for
abrupt cut have an underlying link between the mora of the nucleus and the postvocalic
consonant, as shown in 69. This representation is the same for originally geminate
96
consonants (69a) and for originally nongeminate codas (69c), while smoothly cut
syllables (69b) do not have such a link. Both originally geminate and nongeminate codas ultimately receive moras on the surface by weight-by-position.
(69) a. NHG b. NHG c. ME mtte nme fæste μ μ μ m a t n a m f æ s t [mat(t)] [nam] [fæst]
Thus, although the surface representation of geminate/ambisyllabic consonants changes only by the addition of an abrupt cut linkage between the nuclear mora and the postvocalic consonant, the underlying representation shows a total shift in contrasts, from whether a consonant is moraic or nonmoraic to whether a consonant has an abrupt cut link to the preceding mora. This shift is the loss of distinctive gemination, although it may or may not coincide with the loss of phonetic consonant length.
In the foregoing section, a representational mechanism for the development of syllable cut has been presented, but no phonological motivation for the development has been given. It is true that the exact motivation for the development of syllable cut remains unclear, but there are several factors that may well play a role. Murray (2006) points out two features of Old West Germanic languages during their quantity stage that resemble parts of syllable cut and may have played a role in reanalysis. First, early
West Germanic lengthened short vowels in open monosyllables: compare Gothic n with Old English n ‘now’. This is presumably the effect of a bimoraic minimal word requirement, since it predates the loss of quantity. The development eliminated the quantity contrast in this subset of open syllables, which could have been an impulse
97 towards the loss of quantity in all open syllables. However, this would not seem to be a pressure towards the development of abrupt cut so much as something that may have contributed towards the loss of quantity. The second feature is the predominance of short vowels before geminates, and relative lack of long vowels in this environment. A large portion of the geminates in West Germanic came from West Germanic
Gemination, which geminated all consonants before /j/, and voiceless stops before liquids, but only applied following a short vowel, creating this pattern (Murray and
Vennemann 1983). This pattern was especially strong in Old English, Old Dutch, and the other West Germanic languages aside from Old High German; in these languages, long vowels before geminate consonants were extremely rare. The pattern was weaker in Old High German, where the Second Sound Shift created geminate fricatives out of the original intervocalic voiceless stops; these new geminates occurred after long vowels as well as after short vowels. Murray (2006) suggests that the predominance of short vowels before geminates (and associated coarticulation phenomena) favoured a reinterpretation as abrupt cut.
Another possible factor is simply the preference of closed syllables for abrupt cut. In the foregoing discussion, quantity languages were treated as having smooth cut in all syllables, but if the preference for abrupt cut in closed syllables is strong enough, it may cause closed syllables in (some) quantity languages to have dependent and non- contrastive abrupt cut. This is however difficult to investigate in the absence of clearly defined phonetic properties of syllable cut that are distinct from the phonetic properties of quantity; since cut is a dependent property, the phonological effects of cut will not be evident. If syllable cut does occur as a dependent property in quantity systems with
98
reasonable frequency, it would also make it harder to determine what the distinctive
phonetic correlates of syllable cut actually are, since a property that is indicative of
syllable cut (and not of quantity) may nevertheless be found in a quantity language due
to the dependent syllable cut.27 A phonetic tendency for abrupt cut in closed syllables (at least with short vowels) might have been supplemented by the (relative) lack of long vowels before geminate consonants to induce the reinterpretation of quantity contrasts as cut in closed syllables. A schema of how this might work is shown in 70.
(70) a. *CV CV: CVC CV:C CVCV CV:CV CVC:V *CV:C:V b. μ μμ μ μ μμμ μ μμ μ μ μμμ
*CV CV CVC CV C CVCV CVCV CVCV *CVCV c. μ μμ μ μ μμμ μ μμ μ μ μμμ
*CV CV CVC CV C CVCV CVCV CVCV *CVCV d. μ μμ μ μ μμμ μ μμ μ μ μμμ
*CV CV CVC CV C CVCV CVCV CVCV *CVCV
In 70a, the phonetic forms of old West Germanic are shown; in 70b, the phonological
representations they would have if there was no phonetic tendency for abrupt cut in
closed syllables. (Underlying links are shown with solid lines, while derived links are
27 The distribution of the phonetic correlates of cut in a syllable cut language and in a quantity language with dependent syllable cut would, however, appear different. In a syllable cut language, the phonetic correlate of abrupt cut would appear in all syllables with apparently short vowels, and not in syllables with long vowels; in a quantity language with dependent syllable cut, open syllables with short vowels would have the correlate of smooth cut, not that of abrupt cut; closed syllables with short vowels would have the correlate of abrupt cut. Open syllables with long vowels would of course have smooth cut and its phonetic correlate; whether closed syllables with long vowels would have smooth cut and its correlate due to the preference of long vowels for smooth cut, or whether they would abrupt cut and its correlate due to being closed is unclear.
99
shown with dashed lines.) The result of the phonetic tendency being active, producing
abrupt cut in closed syllables with short vowels, is shown in 70c; this still represents a
quantity language, since cut is derived and non-distinctive. Reinterpretation of
gemination as abrupt cut then takes place, as shown in 70d. Here, closed syllables with
short vowels (which formerly had derived abrupt cut) are reinterpreted as having
underlying abrupt cut; closed syllables with long vowels retain their length and smooth cut. The reinterpretation of abrupt cut as underlying allows an explanation for the lack of long vowels before geminates, since there are now no underlying independently moraic consonants, and abrupt cut is not allowed after bimoraic vowels. In the quantity systems in 70b,c, the lack of geminates after long vowels had no straightforward explanation; they could not be excluded by a prohibition on trimoraic syllables, since closed syllables with long vowels are trimoraic.
This is still a tentative account, but it is a sketch of the sort of influences that might cause a syllable cut system to develop. The particular version given here implies
that phonological degemination was the first stage of the loss of quantity; this is
consistent with the English facts, since degemination was an early change and preceded
OSL, as shown by Murray’s (2000) investigation of the Ormulum, but whether it fits the
facts of other languages remains to be seen.
Another issue is just how the mismatched merger shown in 57 on p. 87 takes
place, and in particular, how it is acquisitionally possible for a phonetic form to remain
the same but be reassigned a different representation (as occurs with long vowels,
shown in 66 on p. 94), while another phonological form remains the same but receives a
different phonetic interpretation (as occurs with short vowels, shown in 61 on p. 92). I
100
am not certain how this took place, but one possibility that presents itself is as follows.
In both a quantity system and a syllable cut system, the phonetic duration of a vowel is
determined by its moraic associations. In a quantity system, a vowel with two moras is
longer than a vowel with one mora. In a syllable cut system, a vowel with one whole
mora is longer than a vowel with a shared mora. In each system, this appears as a
binary contrast between phonetically short vowels [V] and phonetically long vowels
[V]. Suppose, however, that at least during the transitional stage, not two but three
phonetic grades of length are in play: bimoraic vowels are phonetically long [V], monomoraic smoothly cut vowels, with a single whole mora, are phonetically short [V], and abruptly cut vowels, with only a shared mora, are phonetically extra-short [V].
During the quantity stage, long [V] and short [V] were in evidence. The introduction of
abrupt cut into the system brought with it extra short [V]. Suppose the loss of vowel bimoraicity was actually accompanied by a shortening, from [V] to [V]. This would still
have left only two grades of phonetic length, [V] and [V]; in assigning length
designations to a system with two degrees of (phonetic) length, it is natural to use the
designations short and long rather than extra-short and short. Over time, both the extra-
short and the short vowels may have become somewhat phonetically longer, once there
were no distinctively long vowels in the system, so that the extra-short vowels became
merely phonetically short and the short vowels became phonetically long. Under this
system, the apparent mismatched merger would not actually be mismatched, since long
vowels would be shortened both phonetically and phonologically.
101
4. Summary
The quantity changes of Middle High German and Middle English are difficult to account for from a quantity viewpoint that analyzes them in terms of mora count. In particular, HCL involves lengthening in sequences that were already at least bimoraic, which would make them worse from the point of view of a bimoraic preference, and degemination applies to sequences that were already bimoraic and thus should not be improved by degemination. In a syllable cut analysis, these changes are explainable in terms of the development of syllable cut (influenced by various phonetic and structural factors) and the subsequent loss of quantity. Using the moraic analysis of syllable cut developed in chapter 4, the development of a cut contrast involves the development of an abrupt cut link between a vowel and a postvocalic consonant, under the influence of the phonetic and structural factors in question; the loss of quantity involves the loss of a mora from bimoraic vowels, and the loss of an underlying mora from geminate consonants.
102
Chapter Six: Quantity changes and syllable cut in Middle Dutch
0. Introduction
In this chapter, I describe the quantity changes of Dutch from a traditional point of
view, then discuss the relevance of syllable cut. Although our records of Old Dutch are
extremely scanty, we can deduce from the fact that West Germanic was a quantity
language and Modern Dutch is a syllable cut language (as shown in chapter 4) that
Dutch too must have undergone a shift from a quantity system to a syllable cut system
some time during its history. And as expected if the quantity changes of Middle English
and German are representative of this transition, Dutch also underwent analogous
changes, though these are generally held to have already been completed by the time we
begin to have significant records of Middle Dutch in the mid-1100s.28 As well as OSL,
these changes include a change similar to HCL, which operates contrary to the
expectation of a quantity-based account preferring bimoraic syllables, and degemination, which is also not predicted in a quantity-based account since it applies to syllables which are already bimoraic. As discussed above, both of thse are explainable in a syllable cut analysis, providing evidence that the Dutch changes involve the transition to a syllable cut system. After outlining the changes in Dutch and showing that a syllable cut analysis for them is superior to a quantity analysis, I turn to the dating of the Dutch quantity changes. If degemination precedes OSL it would provide further evidence that syllable cut is involved, since syllable cut allows this ordering to take place, in contrast to traditional quantity accounts. If degemination follows OSL, it would be interesting
28 Old Dutch is conventionally have considered to have lasted until 1100, Middle Dutch from 1100 until 1500, and Modern Dutch from 1500 on (Donaldson 1983:126–128).
103
from the point of view of research into the transition to syllable cut changes, since it
would show that OSL and degemination may occur in either order in the development
of syllable cut systems from quantity systems.
1. Quantity changes and syllable cut in Middle Dutch
Open syllable lengthening took place in Dutch just as in English and German, as in 71;
with Dutch, unlike with English and German, our early records are unfortunately very
scanty, as discussed in section 3.2 below; for this reason, Old English and not Old
Dutch will be used to represent the quantity inherited from West Germanic, in contrast
with Middle and Modern Dutch subsequent to the changes:
(71) OE Middle Dutch Modern Dutch English a. fugel vgel vgel [vo l] fowl b. hunig hnich hning [ho n] honey c. cyning cninc kning [ko n] king d. talu tle taal [ta l] tale e. sunu sne zoon [zo n] son f. nama nme naam [na m] name (Lahiri and Dresher 1999:681–682)
When high vowels underwent OSL, they were lowered to mid vowels, as seen in 71a– c,e. Degemination also took place in Dutch (Van Bree 1987:154–155, Goossens
1974:73–74, 77–81), as shown in 72.
104
(72) OE Middle Dutch Modern Dutch Gloss a. settan /tt/ setten zetten /t/ [zt(n)] ‘set’ b. habban /bb/ hebben hebben /b/ [hb(n)] ‘have’ c. offren /ff/ offeren offeren /f/ [offr(n)] ‘offer’ d. feallan /ll/ vallen vallen /l/ [vl(n)] ‘fall’ (examples from Goossens 1974:77–81)
As in English and German, there are some more minor patterns that do not fit within the basic OSL and degemination picture. Vowels (especially a and e)29 were often
lengthened before clusters of r followed by a dental consonant, in a change that bears
some resemblance to HCL, as shown in the data in 73 (where Dutch ae and aa represent
long a and ee represents long e).30
(73) OHG Middle Dutch Modern Dutch Gloss a. garto gaerde gaard [art] ‘garden’ b. art aert aard [art] ‘nature’ c. erda aerde, eerde aarde [ard] ‘earth’ (Van der Meer 1927:11–12)
Long vowels were also often shortened before consonant clusters (especially ft and xt)31
or geminates (Van der Meer 1927:2), as shown in 74.
29 In the case of e, lengthening before r was frequently accompanied by a quality change to [a]. 30 In 73–74, the pre-quantity shift vowel length is represented by Old High German or, in one case, by Old Saxon. 31 ft regularly had regularly become xt by Middle Dutch or earlier (Van der Meer 1927:88, Schönfeld 1964:83–84).
105
(74) OHG Middle Dutch Modern Dutch Gloss a. dhte dichte dicht [dxt] ‘dense, thick’ b. sfto (OS) sacht zacht [zxt] ‘soft’ c. jmar jamer, jammer jammer [jmr] ‘misery’ d. iomr immer, emmer immer [mr] ‘always’ (Van der Meer 1927:9, 30–31)
Note that 74(c–d) appear to be cases of spontaneous gemination of m before -er, similar
to the spontaneous gemination sometimes claimed for German, as mentioned above;
Van der Meer (1927:2) mentions a tendency of m to spontaneously geminate.
The great resemblance between the Dutch quantity changes and those in German
and English, both in the major patterns and in the exceptions, supports the idea that the
Dutch changes are also the manifestation of a change from quantity to syllable cut. The
two major changes that show the loss of the quantity system, OSL and degemination,
occur in Dutch just as in English and German. The lowering of high vowels to mid
vowels through OSL parallels the lowering that accompanies OSL of high vowel in
English, though Dutch does not show the same tendency for high vowels to forego
OSL. Lengthening before r+dental, like HCL, is explainable in terms of a shift to
smooth cut before a highly sonorous consonant, but is inexplicable in mora-counting
terms. The shortening of long vowels before consonant clusters resembles closed
syllable shortening and can be explained by the preference of closed syllables for abrupt
cut; the fact that it is particularly likely before ft and xt clusters, containing low-sonority consonants, is likely due to the preference of abrupt cut for consonants with low sonority. The apparently spontaneous gemination of m (before -er in the examples given, but also before -en in some infinitive forms), can be explained without resorting
106
to unmotivated gemination, as a transition to abrupt cut before sequences with a weak
onset-nucleus bond, as in the similar German and English cases.32
2. Fricatives, their history, and syllable cut
As mentioned in chapter 4, section 4 above, there is a historical explanation for the
strong Modern Dutch tendency for voiced /v, z/ not to occur intervocalically under
abrupt cut (and for the weaker tendency for voiceless /f, s/ not to occur intervocalically
under smooth cut). The explanation requires tracing the development of the Dutch
fricative system from the West Germanic period. West Germanic had the voiceless
fricative phonemes /f, , s, x/; the voiced fricatives [v, , ] were not phonemic, but
occurred as post-sonorant allophones of the voiced stops /b, d, /.33 Broadly speaking,
the stop allophones occurred initially and as geminates, while the fricative allophones
occurred finally and as medial singletons. Thus, the voiceless fricatives [f, , x]
contrasted with voiced stops [b, d, ] in the former environments and with voiced
fricatives [v, , ] in the latter environments;34 [s] had no voiced counterpart, either stop
or fricative, since the [z] that developed through Verner’s Law had been rhotacized to
[r].
Between West Germanic and Old Dutch, at least one important development
took place: final devoicing eliminated the contrast between voiced and voiceless
32 This, however, requires the assumption that -er and -en represented syllabic consonants in Middle Dutch; they are not syllabic consonants in Modern Standard Dutch, although some northern dialects do have syllabic consonants. 33 It is irrelevant to the present discussion whether the labial fricatives were bilabial or labiodental; I show them as labiodental at all stages. 34 Actually, the voiced velar seems to have been a fricative in more environments than the other voiced obstruents; in Dutch it became a fricative everywhere, which accounts for the fact that /x, / do not show the same distributional restrictions as /s, z/ and /f, v/.
107
fricatives in final position, leaving only the medial singleton environment for them to
contrast in (Goossens 1974:65–66). By the time of Middle Dutch, further developments
had obliterated the contrast in this remaining environment: in initial and medial
singleton position, the voiceless fricatives [f, s, ] became voiced to [v, z, ];35 []
further became a stop and left the realm of fricatives, while [x] did not occur in the
relevant environments and thus did not undergo the change; thus, it is only the labial
and sibilant fricatives that remain of interest and contribute to the Modern Dutch pattern
(Goossens 1974:75–76).36 The voicing of initial fricatives had the effect that [v]
differentiated itself from being an allophone of /b/ and instead became an allophone of
/f/; [f] and [v] did not contrast, since [v] occurred initially and as a medial singleton,
while [f] occurred finally and as a geminate; [b] now contrasted with [v] in initial
position and with [f] as a geminate (Goossens 1974:75). Similarly, [z] was an allophone
of /s/ which occurred initially and as a medial singleton. The non-contrastive
distribution of [f] and [v] did not last long, however, since loan words with initial [f]
were soon adopted, causing /f/ and /v/ once more to be different phonemes. It is harder to tell exactly when the complementary distribution of [s] and [z] was broken up
through loans, since both were spelt with in Middle Dutch, but it did take place,
and initial /s/ and /z/ both occur in Modern Dutch (Goossens 1974:75).
The important aspect of distribution for syllable cut considerations is that medial
singletons were voiced and geminates were voiceless. Since syllables followed by
35 The exact definition of initial position varies for the different consonants; for /f/ but not /s/ it includes the position before /l/ and /r/ (Goossens 1974:75). 36 Geminate //, which remained voiceless like the other geminates, became /ss/ and ultimately underwent degemination to /s/ (Goossens 1974:74).
108 singletons emerged after the quantity changes as smoothly cut, while syllables closed by geminates emerged as abruptly cut, smoothly cut syllables ended up with voiced fricatives while abruptly cut ones ended up with voiceless fricatives. Thus, the correlation between voiceless fricatives and abrupt cut and between voiced fricatives and smooth cut is simply accidental fallout of the initial distribution of voiced and voiceless fricatives.
3. Dating the Middle Dutch quantity changes
Section 1 of this chapter showed that Dutch underwent quantity changes analogous to those in English and German, including the apparent exceptions to OSL that are more easily explained under a syllable cut account than a traditional pure quantity account.
The apparent exceptions themselves, along with the similarities to the German and
English changes, provide evidence that the quantity changes in Dutch were also the consequences of a transition from a quantity system to a syllable cut system, and not just lengthenings and shortenings within a quantity system. Murray (2000) showed for
English that the dating of the quantity changes further supported a syllable cut analysis, since the existence of a transitional stage where degemination but not open syllable lengthening had been completed is explicable only under a syllable cut analysis. In this section I investigate the dating of the quantity changes in Dutch, specifically of OSL and degemination, in an attempt to determine whether they provide further support for the quantity changes as the development of syllable cut; results, however, are so far inconclusive. First, in section 3.1 I discuss the limited attestation of Old Dutch. In sections 3.2–3.7 I discuss four different types of evidence that may aid in dating OSL: orthography, metre, rhyme, and other sound changes. In section 3.8 I discuss
109
degemination and the potential evidence for dating it, and in section 3.9 I discuss what
the available evidence indicates about the relative dating of the two changes.
3.1 The attestation of Old Dutch
We have substantial records including weight-sensitive poetry from the Old English and
Old High German periods that enable us to be sure that the West Germanic quantity
system still persisted at that time. For Dutch, we are less fortunate. The Wachtendonck
Psalms are the only text of any substantial size, and were originally an interlinear gloss of a Latin psalter (Kyes 1969:1). Their dialect, variously referred to as Old (East) Dutch
or Old (East) Low Franconian, may be considered Old Dutch as long as it is kept in
mind that they represent a dialect in the south-east of the Dutch-speaking area, probably
from the area of Limburg (Kyes 1969:6–10). Later texts come predominantly from
Flanders, Brabant, and Holland, so that some differences may be attributable to dialect,
not chronology. Even the Wachtendonck Psalms do not survive in their original form,
but only in wordlists and partial transcriptions (sometimes with modernizations) from
the 16th and 17th centuries (Kyes 1969:1–5). A further difficulty with the Wachtendonck
Psalms is that they show some mixing of dialects; the first nine psalms are in Central
Franconian, a High German dialect, and traces of this dialect persist even in the later
portions that are predominantly Old Dutch (Kyes 1969:8–10). Various hypotheses have
been offered to account for the mixture, including the proposal that an Old Dutch- speaking scribe copied them from a Central Franconian text, slowly becoming better at
adapting them to his own dialect as he went along (see Kyes 1969:8–10). Aside from
the Wachtendonck Psalms, we have onomastic and toponymic material, some sporadic
glosses in Latin manuscripts, and a single sentence in Old (West) Dutch/Old Flemish
110
written as a probatio pennae along with a corresponding Latin sentence; this sentence is given in 75.
(75) The Old Dutch probatio pennae Old Dutch: hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi(c) (e)nda thu uu(at) unbida(n) (uu)e nu
Latin: abent omnes volucres nidos inceptos nisi ego et tu quid expectamus nu(nc)
Translation: All the birds have begun their nests except I and you; what are we waiting for now? (Schönfeld 1964:xxxix, Willemyns 2003:60–61)
3.2 Dating OSL
It is around 1200, roughly at the beginning of the period defined as Middle Dutch, that
substantial Dutch records finally begin to appear. The traditional view is that OSL had already been completed by this point (e.g., Van Wijk 1941:16, Van Bree 1987:86, Van
der Meer 1927:1). Fikkert (2000:321–323), however, contends on the basis of metrical
evidence that a quantity distinction was still made in the poem Sente Lutgart, ca. 1263–
1270. In the following sections I examine and evaluate the different types of evidence
and potential evidence for the dating of OSL, or more precisely the loss of quantity
distinctions in open syllables. There are four main kinds of evidence that could be used
in dating OSL: orthographic evidence, metrical evidence, rhyme, and other sound
changes that interact with OSL.
111
3.3 Orthographic evidence for the date of OSL
If the scribes of a certain time period encoded any prosodic distinctions in their
orthography, it may be possible to determine whether they were encoding quantity,
syllable cut, or a combination. Thus, Murray (2000) determined (with the help of
metrical evidence) that Orm’s orthography encoded primarily syllable cut, using double
consonant graphs to indicate abruptly cut syllables, while vowel length in open syllables
was encoded sporadically using diacritics. If, on the one hand, vowel quantity is
consistently marked on open syllables, this is evidence that OSL has not yet happened.
If, on the other hand, a distinction is made in closed syllables but not in open syllables,
this is evidence that syllable cut and not quantity is being encoded. This may indicate
that OSL has taken place and we are dealing with a pure syllable cut system, or, as with
the double consonant graphs of the Ormulum, it may indicate syllable cut while disregarding the existence of a vowel length contrast in open syllables; in either case, it is evidence for the phonological relevance of syllable cut. If, however, no distinctions are made in closed or open syllables, then the orthography is not encoding the sorts of prosodic information in question, and it does not aid in determining which system was present. Thus, to make use of orthographic information, we need first to ask whether a relevant contrast is made, and then whether it is marking quantity, syllable cut, or a combination.37
37 In analyzing orthography, my assumptions are as follows. I assume that in periods when orthography was not standardized, spelling largely reflects the phonology of the writer, as scribes write what they perceive. This reflection is not that of a straightforward phonemic or phonetic transcription. It may fail to represent contrasts that are made in the writer’s speech. It may use allographs in free variation, representing the same sound in different ways, or it may write the same sound in different ways in different contexts. It is highly unlikely, however, to consistently represent contrasts that are not made in
112
For the most part, the older Germanic languages had quantity systems but did
not indicate vowel quantity orthographically. Old Dutch was like the others in not
indicating vowel quantity orthographically, for the most part. According to Gysseling
(1961:32), at the end of the 8th century some efforts were made at Wichmond to write
vowel length; he cites the following names dated to between 796 and 804, surviving in copies made in the early 10th century: Raadgerus, Raadald, Oodhelmus, Ooduuercus,
and Thornspiic; the name Raadald shows the use of a double vowel spelling in an open
syllable, while the other examples show it in closed syllables. This implies that vowel
length, and not syllable cut, is being written. However, this was a false start. Gysseling
(1961:32–33) states that vowel length did not again begin to be written until around the
early 13th century, with a few early examples during the 12th century.
The general picture of Middle Dutch orthography, presented in e.g., Le Roux
and Le Roux (1969:21–23) and Van der Meer (1927:lv–lvi), is that the predominant
orthographic conventions in Middle Dutch resemble the orthography of Modern Dutch:
in closed syllables, ‘short’ vowels (i.e., abruptly cut syllables) are written with a simple
the writer’s speech. The development of orthographies is also affected by spelling conventions inherited either from earlier stages of the language, or from another language which was influential in the development of a written tradition or the scribe’s training. When an orthographic convention is inherited but the phonological basis for it changes, the orthographic convention may come to have a new function. For instance, in Middle English, word-final
113
grapheme (a, e, i, o, u); where there is only one intervocalic consonant after a ‘short’
vowel, it is written double. ‘Long’ vowels and diphthongs (i.e., smoothly cut syllables)
are written with digraphs in closed syllables (e.g., the long vowels ae, ee, ii, oe, uu). In open syllables, where no cut contrast was present, most ‘long’ vowels are written with simple graphemes, though some are written with digraphs. This summary, however, is based on the spelling conventions in place during the later part of the Middle Dutch period, and not the earliest part. As mentioned above, Middle Dutch vowel length began to be written occasionally during the 12th century and began to catch on during the 13th
century (Gysseling 1961:32–33). Gysseling (1963:11–19) investigates the spelling
conventions in the statutes of the leprosarium of Ghent from 1236, which is one of the
earliest Middle Dutch texts that has been preserved in its original. In this text, vowel
length is only rarely indicated by the use of digraphs, but is often (though still
inconsistently) indicated by the use of diacritics. An overview of the relevant parts of
Gysseling’s findings is given in 76 (drawn from Gysseling 1963:13–17):
(76) Closed syllable38 Open syllable Originally long or <á>39
38 Syncope creates closed syllables with OSL vowels; e.g., gemact ‘made, PA. PART.’ (< gemaket). Gysseling (1963:14) notes that when length is not marked, we naturally cannot be certain that OSL has indeed occurred. 39 <á> becomes more abundant towards the end (Gysseling 1963:13). 40 I use the expression OSL (and the analogous terms for other vowels) to indicate vowels that ultimately undergo OSL, not to indicate that it has undergone OSL at this stage, which of course is the issue under discussion.
114
Originally long
Long is not included in this table, since accents were often written on both long and
short i, in order to distinguish them from other letters, and not to indicate length; it also
generally was not doubled to indicate length (Gysseling 1963:15). The short vowels a,
e, o, u were written without accents.42
Several observations can be made from the table above. First, digraph spellings
of long vowels are still quite rare; with and they are quite sporadic, while with the
comparison of the frequency of the three). With (which was probably at this stage a
41 The five cases are tétene, éten, téten, étet, and derékeninge; Gysseling (1963:14) proposes that in these cases, the accent distinguishes stressed from unstressed e. 42 Gysseling (1963) does not state this in as many words, but it is implied by many things he says, e.g., referring to the accent on long vowels as a length marker, making special note of the fact that accents occur on short i to distinguish it from other letters, attemping to explain accents on a couple words with short vowels (óp, ophór) as sentence accents, and stating that the accent on the words ámbach and cússine, with short vowels, is ‘zonder veel zin’ (Gysseling 1963:17; ‘without much sense’).
115
diphthong: Gysseling 1963:15), digraph spellings predominate, as they do also with ie.
Second, all instances of digraph spellings are cases of originally long vowels or diphthongs. This is exceptionless; while there are a few instances of digraphs being used in open syllables, there are no instances of digraphs being used for OSL vowels.
Accents, by contrast, are primarily restricted to closed syllables, as Gysseling (1963:17) notes, but are not restricted to originally long vowels. In closed syllables, accents are frequent both on originally long , , and , and on the OSL vowels and ; they are not attested on OSL , but examples of this sound in a closed syllable are rare so this could well be accidental. In open syllables, originally long , and normally do not receive accents, the only exception being a single instance of an accent on . Originally long , by contrast, does frequently receive an accent in open syllables; Gysseling
(1963:17) proposes that this is to distinguish it from OSL . In open syllables, OSL normally does not receive an accent; although Gysseling does not explicitly discuss the spellings of OSL and in open syllables, his practice appears to be to account for all instances of accents and digraphs, but not to account for instances of vowels spelt single without accents, and it is thus reasonable to conclude that OSL and most likely occur consistently as single letters without accent markings. It thus appears that the accent markings, since they are largely limited to closed syllables, on both originally long vowels and OSL vowels, predominantly indicate smooth cut, and secondarily differentiate originally long from OSL in open syllables. Smooth cut need only be indicated in closed syllables, since in open syllables it is non-contrastive. It would not be inconsistent with the evidence to propose that accents mark smooth cut, while double vowel spellings mark vowel length, in a dialect in which cut has been phonologized but
116
length distinctions still exist; however, the double vowel spellings are rare enough that
they are not conclusive evidence that vowel length is maintained.
Fikkert (2000:322–323), who contends that OSL had not yet taken place in the
poem Sente Lutgart (ca. 1263–1270) claims that in that poem, originally long vowels are
sometimes written long while originally short vowels never are; this is consistent with
the spellings in the somewhat earlier statutes of the Ghent leprosarium discussed above.
However, she does not discuss whether syllable structure affects the writing of long
vowels, nor provide any data on the matter, so it is difficult to determine the
significance of this.
Van Loey (1976) also provides information on the development of Middle Dutch
spelling conventions, though only on single graphemes vs. digraphs, not diacritic
markings. Short vowels (in closed syllables) were regularly written with single
graphemes throughout the period: with , with
With long vowels, matters are more complicated. An overview of Van Loey’s
information on the spelling of long vowels, paying particular attention to early spellings,
is given in 77; I ignore diphthongs and spelling before r, which often diverges from
spelling in other contexts:
43 Sometimes
117
(77) Closed syllable Open syllable Originally long 13th c–early 14th c.; later in Limburg mostly & OSL
OSL
The main picture that appears in Van Loey’s information is that the transition to spelling long vowels in closed syllables with double graphemes happened primarily during the 14th century. Single graphemes were still widespread during the 13th century, although double graphemes also occurred; during the 14th century, double graphemes
46 Depending on area and whether OSL or originally long ; not during early period.
118
were predominant, but single graphemes still occurred. Particularly in the 15th century,
double graphemes began to be written frequently in open syllables as well (just how
frequently is unclear), a pattern which has once again been lost in Modern Dutch. Both
Van Loey’s and Gysseling’s data coincide to suggest orthographic indication of syllable cut during the 13th century; the distribution of digraphs in the text investigated by
Gysseling suggests slightly that a vowel length contrast in open syllables may have
remained, but is not decisive. More detailed information on the spelling conventions of
particular periods and even particular texts is required to determine whether there is any
orthographic evidence for the maintenance of vowel length in early Middle Dutch.
3.4 Metrical evidence for the date of OSL
Since vowel quantity affects syllable weight, poetic metres which involve syllable
weight can show whether vowels in open syllables were long or short. In a normal
quantity system, open syllables with short vowels are light, while those with long
vowels are heavy. If OSL took place in the traditional pure quantity manner, turning
short vowels into quantitatively long vowels, light syllables would be lost in favour of
heavy syllables, since closed syllables are heavy, and open syllables with long vowels
are also heavy; the probable exception to this would be open syllables with schwa. If,
by contrast, OSL took place as argued here, with the loss of length distinctions giving
all open syllables phonologically short vowels, then all open syllables would be light.
Additionally, if metre provides evidence for stress patterns, and stress is weight-
sensitive, metre can provide indirect evidence about weight.
The traditional Germanic alliterative metre was weight-sensitive, and thus
provides some of the evidence that the older Germanic languages used quantity systems.
119
Middle Dutch, however, did not use the traditional alliterative metre. Instead, it
predominantly used (rhymed) accentual verse, with a certain number of stresses per line
but not fixed positions for these stresses (Zonneveld 1993:198–199, 2000:38–39). The
Sente Lutgart, however, which Fikkert (2000:321–323) argues did not have OSL, is
unique among Middle Dutch poems for being written in an iambic metre (Zonneveld
2000:44–47);47 Zonneveld (1993:198–199) suggests that because of its iambicity, it is an
especially good source for determining Middle Dutch stress patterns.
Fikkert’s primary argument against OSL in Sente Lutgart is that open syllables
with originally short vowels behave as light; she directly contrasts them with closed
syllables, which behave as heavy. Thus, words with a LH or LHL pattern, e.g.,
cninc/cninge ‘king(s)’ and mnek(e) ‘monk(s)’ invariably occur with the poetic accent
on the first syllable, while words with an initial heavy HH or HHL pattern, e.g.,
erminc/erminge ‘poor one(s)’ may occur with the accent on either syllable. Fikkert
attributes this to the activity of the Germanic Foot proposed by Dresher and Lahiri
(1991): LH (and LL) sequences count as a single unit for footing, giving us the footing in 78.
(78) ([L H] ) ([L H] L) (H) (H) (H) (H L) co ninc co nin ge er minc48 er min ge (Fikkert 2000:322)
47 Curiously, the Ormulum parallels the Sente Lutgart in being an anomalously early iambic poem; iambic metre did not become a normal part of English metre until Chaucer; the parallels between these two iambic poems are the subject of Zonneveld (2000). 48 Fikkert (2000:322) gives this as erming, but on page 319 she gives the form as erminc, both in glossing it and in citations of its occurrence in a couple lines of the Sente Lutgart. I choose the form erminc, with final devoicing represented in the spelling, both because it is the form in the lines of text that she cites, and to increase the visual parallelism with coninc, which she gives with devoicing.
120
Since coninc and coninge are composed of a single foot, they can only receive the accent on the head of that foot. By contrast, erminc and erminge are composed of two feet, so they can receive the accent on the head of either foot. This argument is not directly helpful; it excludes the possibility that vowels in open syllables have become bimoraic, which would be the result of OSL in a traditional account based strictly on quantity, but it does not necessarily indicate that quantity distinctions remained; it would also be consistent with a syllable cut version of OSL, in which all open syllables have become light. To determine which is the case, it is necessary to look at whether open syllables with originally long vowels still behave as heavy or whether they behave as light. If a given poem distinguishes light and heavy syllables, it is the distribution of weight in open syllables that is important. If all are light in opposition to heavy closed syllables, we have lack of quantity in open syllables, and thus the syllable cut version of
OSL is supported. If some are light and others are heavy, OSL has not occurred. It is probably not possible to tell conclusively from metre that traditional OSL has occurred, since this would make all syllables with full vowels alike in weight, and weight would not be available to play a metrical role. If weight does not play a metrical role, then nothing can be said about whether it is present in the language of the text or not.
Fikkert does not directly address the question of whether open syllables with long vowels are heavy, but her analysis assumes that this is the case, and her list of selected words with the pattern (H)(H) contains words with initial open syllables
(Fikkert 2000:317–318). Some of these words, e.g., vant ‘enemy, devil (cf. Engl. fiend)’, are unlike the words with an initial short vowel, in that they frequently have stress on the second syllable. A comparison of the LH(L) words and the
121 monomorphemic HH(L) words with initial open syllables is given in 79 and 80; numbers in parentheses beside the HH(L) words indicate forms found in line-final position, where non-initial stress is particularly common:
(79) Accent on LH(L) words in Lutgart (Fikkert 2000:322) LH(L) c/kringen — — 14 — c/kninc 84 — 1 — bsech 15 — — mnech all — many — slech 8 — 7 — mnek 1 — 5 —
(80) Accent on HH(L) words with open syllables in Lutgart (Fikkert 2000:317–318) HH(L) ijacop/b 3 1 (1) — — v/uant 75 36 (25) 11 (9) 1 (1) ihesus 24 2 (1) — — brabant 2 10 (8) — — thomas 4 (2) — — abijt 15 (11) 1 — ada(e)m 4 4 — alart 1 — —
This does show a significant difference between the LH(L) words and the HH(L) words: while the LH(L) words are never stressed on the second syllable in either bisyllabic or trisyllabic forms, the open syllable HH(L) words are. In the bisyllabic form, some
HH(L) are found only or predominantly with second-syllable stress, while others are found with second-syllable stress in the minority of cases. In the trisyllabic forms, second-syllable stress predominates in the HH(L) words, in contrast to its total absence
122
in the LH(L) words. Thus, it does appear that a weight distinction in open syllables is
supported, and thus OSL has not taken place.
3.5 Evidence for the date of OSL from rhyme
Another potential source of evidence for OSL comes from rhyme. If etymologically
short vowels are rhymed with etymologically long vowels, this is evidence that the two
had fallen together, and were no longer distinguished—i.e., OSL has occurred.
However, this argument cannot be used to show that OSL has not occurred; if
etymologically short vowels and an etymologically long ones are not rhymed, it may mean that the quantity distinction is preserved, but it is also possible that vowels have been lengthened and are quantitatively the same but differ in quality. According to Quak
(1995:149–150), Middle Dutch poets generally did not distinguish between originally long and OSL ; he cites an example from Jacob van Maerlant’s Der naturen bloeme, in a manuscript of ca. 1290:
bouen allen eidinen die hoit waren [originally long ] crone draghet in der scaren [OSL ] (Quak 1995:149)
Since some modern dialects distinguish between the two types of , Quak (1995:149–
150) proposes that a slight difference remained but was ignored in poetry; Van Loey
(1976:32–33) claims rather that in the dialects of Limburg and the coast (Holland, West
Flanders), the two sounds remained distinct in Middle Dutch, but in the area between
(Brabant, East Flanders), rhymes show that they had fallen together. Original long and
OSL were mostly distinguished in rhyme, consistent with the common distinction in
spelling mentioned above (Quak 1995:150, Van Loey 1976:38). Rhymes between
originally long and OSL do occur in Middle Dutch, even though in the 16th and 17th
123 centuries they were still distinguished, as comments from the period show (Quak
1995:150–151). Van Loey (1976:65) specifies further: a few, but not very many authors avoid rhyming the two; the Sente Lutgart is among the texts in which rhyme is avoided.
Fikkert (2000:323) states that rhymes in the Sente Lutgart predominantly involve vowels that are both originally long or both originally short, without making a distinction between individual vowels or specifying just how predominant this is.
Because of the quality differences in the case of o and e, it would be particularly informative if the frequency of rhymes between originally long and originally short a were distinguished from the frequency of rhymes involving the other vowels, but
Fikkert does not provide this. In any case, the lack of rhyme does not show lack of
OSL, but is consistent with it.
3.6 Other sound changes as evidence for OSL
Sometimes the attempt to date one change can be aided by the dating of another change that interacts with it and is more traceable. For example, if final obstruent devoicing occurs and final schwas are lost, but obstruents made final by the loss of schwa do not undergo devoicing, then devoicing must have preceded the loss of schwa. In the traditional quantity view, the relationship between OSL and degemination is seen as a case of critical ordering of this sort: degemination cannot have taken place before OSL, otherwise OSL would occur in syllables originally followed by a geminate consonant.
This viewpoint is stated by, for example, Goossens (1974:74): ‘Über die relative
Chronologie der Aufhebung der Gemination läßt sich sagen, daß sie auf keinen Fall
älter sein kann als die mnl. Dehnung der Kürzen in offener Silbe. Meistens wird
124
angennommen, daß sie jünger ist.’49 This traditional view is represented also in
Schönfeld (1964:58). However, with a syllable cut analysis, degemination must be later
than the development of a syllable cut opposition, but may precede OSL, since the cut
opposition is sufficient to prevent unwanted neutralization.
With the relative dating of OSL and degemination we see an issue of whether
the interaction of changes indicates the date of OSL or rather the (earlier) date of the
phonologization of syllable cut. This issue must be kept in mind also for other apparent
interactions of OSL with the syllable cut opposition: what appears to require an early
date of OSL may merely indicate an early date of the development of the cut contrast.
OSL in Dutch interacts with syncope. There are cases where OSL took place in
syllables that are made closed by syncope. Quak (1995:150) offers the following
instances of place names with the development of syncope:
(81) ‘Haarlem’ No syncope: a. Haralem [918–948, copy late 11th c.] Syncope: b. Harleim [1st half of 11th c.] c. Hairlem [1105–20, copy ca. 1420, 1130–61, copy ca. 1420]
(82) ‘Aalst’ No syncope: a. Halosta [ca. 850, copy 1070–75] b. in Alisti [10th–11th c.] c. in Alaste [late 11th c.] Syncope d. de Aelste, in Aelste [1135 Falsum?, copy 15th c.]
49 ‘It can be said about the relative chronology of the loss of gemination, that in no case can it be older than the Middle Dutch lengthening of the short vowels in open syllables. Mostly it is assumed that it is later.’ (Goossens (1974:74) allows that both may have taken place at the same time, with the geminates gradually becoming shorter as the vowels became longer.)
125
(83) ‘Gaadsberg’ Before syncope: a. * Godesberg Syncope: b. Gaedsbergh, Gaedsberh [1176, copy mid-17th c.]
These examples appear to show syncope having occurred by the mid-12th century or so,
and OSL predating that, both because the syncopated forms have long vowels (actually,
smooth cut) in Modern Dutch, and because in most of the syncopated forms (81c, 82d,
and 83b, but not 81a), the originally short vowel is written with a digraph. However,
several questions arise in regard to these forms. First, the interaction with syncope can
be evidence for OSL only if these vowels are indeed originally short. Quak does not
provide evidence that the first vowel in Haralem and Halosta was originally short. The
etymologies of the names, as given in Quak’s source, Künzel et al. (1989) are as
follows; unfortunately, Künzel et al. do not indicate vowel length in their etymologies
either.
Haarlem: ‘onl hem “woonplats” met *harula, diminutief bij har “heuvelrug, hoogte”’50 (Künzel et al. 1989:160–161) Aalst: ‘vermoedelijk gm. *alhust “woonplats”’51 (Künzel et al. 1989:53) Gaadsberg: ‘onl bergh “berg” met gades, oostnl. spelling voor godes “van god”’52 (Künzel et al. 1989:143)
Second, it might be questioned whether the lengthening is in fact due to an open syllable, or whether it could instead be due to a following sonorant consonant, along the lines of HCL in Old English. In Gaedsberg(h), of course, there is no sonorant
50 ‘Old Dutch hem “residence” with *harula, diminutive of har “row of hills [?], height”’ 51 ‘probably Germanic *alhust “residence”’ 52 ‘Old Dutch bergh “mountain” with gades, eastern Dutch spelling for godes “of god”’
126
consonant, so this is not an issue. Although Middle Dutch did have a process of
lengthening/smoothing before r followed by a dental consonant, this is not likely to
have affected Aelste, which has an l not an r; it is conceivable, however, that this
process affected Hairlem. Finally, perhaps it is not OSL but the development of syllable
cut that is involved here. Perhaps syncope precedes OSL, but postdates the formation of the cut contrast. In that case, the open syllables would have smooth cut, e.g., Âlaste
/âlast/, which was preserved when syncope took place, creating Âelste /âlst/ (where ae
is used to spell the smoothly cut vowel). When quantity was lost—or perhaps closed
syllable length had already given way to cut in closed syllables before syncope—the
superficial length of smooth cut made this appear as a superficially long vowel, so that
it seems like lengthening has occurred.
Gysseling (1963:18–19) discusses the state of syncope in the 1236 statutes of the
Ghent leprosarium. Here, the inflectional affixes of the 3rd person singular present -(e)t,
the past participle -(e)t, and the genitive singular -(e)s occur in both syncopated and unsyncopated forms, sometimes in the same word, e.g., 3rd person singular present etet,
ét ‘eats’, leset, lest ‘reads’; genitive singular elkes dachs, elcs daghs ‘each day (GEN)’,
hoges dages ‘high day (GEN)’ (Gysseling does not supply glosses). The gerund -(e)n also shows some forms with syncope, e.g., te delne, tedienne. Outside inflectional endings, too, both syncopated and unsyncopated forms occur, e.g., frémden, fremeden.
Again, while accent marks occur on originally short vowels preceding syncope, it is not necessarily the case that OSL has occurred, if accents are marking smooth cut rather than vowel length.
127
Another orthographically visible change is actually potentially part of OSL, but I
have separated it out, since it is a change in quality that accompanied OSL, and not
directly a change in quantity. In open syllables, the high vowels /i/ and /u/ were lowered
to mid vowels, and /y/ (from /u/ by i-umlaut) was lowered to /ø/ (Quak 1995:150–151).
This was visible in the orthography, since the vowels /i/ and /u/ were previously spelt
and but after the change were spelt
(84) High vowel Niueles [1120] Mid vowel Neuela [1183]
(85) High vowel Rinigga [1129] Mid vowel Reninges [1142]
(86) High vowel Uueromeri [918–48, copy 11th c.] Vuermere [1156] Mid vowel ouerste Overmere [2x, <1122–45, forgery,53 copy 3rd quarter 13th c.]
This seems to imply that OSL occurred in the 12th century, just prior to the appearance
of Middle Dutch texts. Several things complicate this. According to Quak (1995:151),
53 Quak (1995:151) indicates that this is a forgery but does not give any further information, and does not clearly reference the source of this data item, so it is not clear what implications this has for the data; it would appear that at the very least it can be dated to the time of the copy in the 13th century or earlier.
128
the Old Dutch high and mid vowels were probably quite close together, since in the
Wachtendonck Psalms u and o sometimes appear in the same words (in both open and
closed syllables), e.g., uuonon vs. uuunon ‘dwell’, and unbeuullan ‘spotless’ vs.
beuuollan ‘dirtied’; i and e also appear to interchange, but this is less certain, since in
the 16th–17th c. transcriptions these two letters are often not distinguishable (Quak
1995:149, Kyes 1969:11–12). Further, short u /u/ and o /o/ had merged to o even in
closed syllables in Middle Dutch; possible traces of /u/ remain in the 13th century (Van
Loey 1976:26–27). Thus it is really only i > e that is helpful.
3.7 The date of OSL: combining the evidence
Bringing this evidence together still leaves us with an incomplete picture. The orthographic evidence from section 3.3 shows that a cut distinction had developed by the time of the 1236 statutes of the Ghent leprosarium; the use of acute accents in closed syllables but not open syllables (apart from originally long ) shows this.
However, there is no firm evidence on whether OSL proper had happened. The metrical evidence in section 3.4 from the Sente Lutgart supports the maintenance of an open- syllable weight contrast ca. 1263–1270. Shortly thereafter, ca. 1290, the rhyming evidence from Jacob van Maerlant implies that OSL has taken place, as discussed in section 3.5. This would be rather a short time frame for OSL to take place in, but perhaps the author of the Sente Lutgart had a conservative dialect with respect to OSL, while Van Maerlant had an innovative one, whether due to geographical or socio/idiolectal differences. The evidence in section 3.6 of syncope does not give much information, since syncope (by the mid 12th century or so) could merely be dating the
development of a cut contrast, rather than true OSL. The evidence from the transition of
129
i to e supports an earlier date for OSL during the 12th century than the evidence from
the Sente Lutgart. There are two possible explanations. Perhaps the metrical data from
the Sente Lutgart is misleading, and OSL has in fact occurred in this poem. If the
change of i to e necessarily implies true OSL, this interpretation is required, since e
from i occurs in the Sente Lutgart, e.g., gegeuen ‘given’ (Fikkert 2000:312); the original
i is seen in OE (ge)gifen, as well as the modern English form. The other possibility is
that the i to e change is not in fact due to true OSL, but rather belongs to the
phonologization of syllable cut, in which case the phonologization of cut would have
taken place in the 12th c., with OSL occurring after the writing of the Sente Lutgart in
the second half of the 13th century.
3.8 Dating degemination
In attempting to determine the date of OSL, a variety of means are available. In the case
of degemination, only orthography plays a significant role. Theoretically, interaction
with other sound changes could play a role, and in the traditional analysis, of course, degemination had to take place after OSL. In a syllable cut analysis, degemination may precede OSL as long as it does not precede the development of a cut distinction. I am not aware of any interactions between degemination and other sound changes that give us any more precise information. Metre could play a role if degemination produced pure onsets, since the new open syllables would be light, but since the results of degemination were the ambisyllabics of abrupt cut, which continue to contribute a mora by weight-by-position, the preceding syllable remained heavy.54 Rhyme does not play a
54 This is evidenced by the heaviness of abruptly cut syllables closed by ambisyllabic consonants in Modern Dutch, shown in 41b in section 1.2 of chapter 4 above.
130
major role either, though it provides some supporting evidence below. The remaining
source of information in dating OSL, that of orthography, is the one that proves most
useful in dating degemination, although the evidence is indirect.
Unlike vowel length, consonant gemination was typically represented in writing
by medieval scribes, by the use of doubled consonants. This is true of Old Dutch as of
other Germanic languages, and gemination can be seen in the Flemish probatio pennae:
hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan [...]. However, the loss of geminates is not directly shown by the development of the orthography; instead, as syllable cut developed and geminate consonants were lost, doubled intervocalic consonants came to indicate abrupt
cut on the preceding syllable, as is still the case in modern Dutch. Since syllables with
intervocalic geminates were the prime source of abruptly cut syllables followed by a
single intervocalic consonant, this did not affect the spelling of most words. This can be
seen in orthographical and phonological development of the word hebban in 87; Old
English is included to show that the geminate consonant is inherited from West
Germanic:
(87) Orthography Phonology Meaning of written double consonant OE habban /hb.bn/ geminate ODu hebban /heb.bn/ geminate (probably; firm evidence lacking) eMDu hebben /heb.bn/ or /hebn/ geminate or singleton, unclear NDu hebben /heb(n)/ singleton
Here, the phonology behind the orthography has changed, while the spelling has remained fairly constant. Thus in the older stages,
131
phonologically relevant orthographic convention, and not simply a frozen spelling, its
relevance changes. It clearly represented a geminate in West Germanic, and was highly likely one in Old Dutch too (although this is hard to show conclusively due to the
limited records), and it equally clearly represents abrupt cut in modern Dutch. The
reinterpretation took place because when the phonology changed, scribes reading
already-written documents saw double consonants in (most of) the locations where they
perceived an abruptly cut syllable with a single intervocalic consonant in their own
phonology, and not elsewhere. This led them to understand written double consonants
as a convention for writing abrupt cut. When did the phonological change take place?
Which value did double consonant graphs have in early Middle Dutch? To determine this, it is necessary to ascertain when the orthographic double consonants began representing something besides consonant length. If written double consonants are
extended to unetymological environments, environments where there has never been a geminate consonant, we can see that they no longer indicate consonant length, but rather syllable cut (or vowel length), since extension to a new function is only likely when the old function has lost phonological relevance. Murray (2000) has done this for the double consonant graphs of Orm in early Middle English, showing that their highly consistent and often unetymological use indicates abrupt cut. I am not aware of a consistent Middle Dutch spelling reformer like Orm, but nevertheless there is evidence of the extension of double graphs in Dutch.
One class of instances comes from words where, contrary to the general trend, an open syllable followed by a single postvocalic consonant became abruptly cut rather than smoothly cut, as in cases like immer, discussed above; however, these cases are
132
traditionally interpreted as gemination (e.g., Van der Meer 1927:2), and so are not the
strongest evidence for reinterpretation.
Another class of instances is provided by the Middle Dutch clitic system. In
Middle Dutch, there were a number of clitics, both proclitics and enclitics, that were
commonly written as a single word with their host. These included articles and personal
pronouns. The clitics relevant for the current purpose are vowel-initial enclitics. The
necessary context is a vowel-initial enclitic attached to a word with an abruptly cut/short
vowel syllable closed by a single consonant. If the consonant is written double
preceding the enclitic, then the double consonant graph must be indicating abrupt cut,
and not consonantal gemination, since this consonant is not etymologically geminate
and has no reason to become geminate.
In these environments, we find several outcomes. Sometimes the consonant is
not doubled, e.g., gavic (=gaf ‘gave’ + -ic ‘I’);55 the form has smooth cut, and would
traditionally be considered to have OSL. This is particularly evident when following
syncope takes place and the vowel is spelt with a digraph, e.g., gavet > gaeft (=gaf
‘gave’ + -et ‘it’). However, in other instances we find abrupt cut, with a double
consonant graph, e.g., gaffer(e) (=gaf ‘gave’ + -er(e) ‘her’), alongside smoothly cut
gaver(e) (Van Loey 1976:121). What probably happened here is that in the forms with
smooth cut, cliticization occurred early, and thus the open syllables in the cliticized
forms did not adopt abrupt cut; the forms were lexicalized and continued in use after the
phonology behind them was no longer active. The forms with abrupt cut would be later,
55 Van Loey (1976:121) takes the v in this form as a case of preservation of voicing, i.e., failure to undergo final devoicing, but it could just as well be a case of intervocalic voicing of a originally voiceless consonant; see Van Loey 1976:98–99, Goossens 1974:75–76.
133
with cliticization occurring after abrupt cut had developed on closed syllables. The
appearance of doubled consonants in enclitic forms with abrupt cut should indicate that degemination has happened; however, I have not been able to determine when these appeared.
Finally, extension of double consonant graphs also took place in inflected forms
of words ending in a ‘short vowel’ followed by a single consonant. Van Loey (1962:90–
92) finds that double graphs appear in this context by the mid-14th century at least in
West and East Flanders, indicating that degemination had taken place by this time at
least in Flanders. Van Loey (1962:91) cautions that it is theoretically possible that these
unetymological double graphemes indicate abrupt cut without gemination, but that
etymological geminates remain geminate; the double consonant graphemes would then
have a double function. However, he finds evidence of abrupt cut from single
consonants rhyming with etymological geminates from the same time period as the
extension of the double graphs, e.g., bi getalle : alle in the poem Walewein (manuscript
from 1350, poem even older); this indicates that singletons and geminates have been
neutralized and thus degemination has occurred. Van Loey (1976) further provides an
example of unetymological double graphs in this context from 1282 in Bruges: the
plural of jok ‘yoke’ occurs as jocken.
Based on Van Loey’s data from inflected forms, degemination took place at least
by ca. 1350, and likely by 1280 based on the example cited in Van Loey (1976); more
data from other contexts would be helpful in further fixing this date. Evidence for an
early boundary on the date of degemination as well as a late boundary would also be
134
useful; however, I have not identified any method that could firmly indicate that
degemination had not taken place.
3.9 The relative date of OSL and degemination
The results of dating OSL and degemination are too tentative and inconclusive to make a firm statement about the ordering of the two. OSL seems to have taken place either during the 12th century, if the change from i to e is indicative of true OSL, or probably
around the end of the 13th century, if the metrical evidence from the Sente Lutgart takes
priority. Degemination appears to have taken place at least by the mid-14th century, and maybe by the late 13th century. If the later date for OSL indicated by the metrical
evidence holds, and the 1282 form jocken is indicative of degemination, then
degemination would seem to be at least as old as OSL; however, if the vowel quality
change is given priority or if degemination is dated to the 14th century, degemination
would have followed OSL. Although I have not resolved this here, I have provided
indication of the routes that can be followed to determine more precisely when each of
the processes occurred.
4. Summary
The Middle Dutch lengthening before /r/, like HCL in Middle English, defies
explanation under a bimoraic template analysis of the quantity changes, but is
understandable as an instance of smooth cut developing (or being maintained) before a
highly sonorous consonant. Degemination likewise cannot be explained by a bimoraic
template, but is an expected part of a transition from quantity to syllable cut. Further,
the apparent need in a quantity analysis for gemination (and then degemination) of /m/
preceding -er is avoided in a syllable cut analysis; only the development of abrupt cut is
135 needed, probably under the influence of a weak onset-nucleus bond in the final unstressed syllable. Thus, a transition to syllable cut provides a more adequate account of the changes than shortenings and lengthenings within a quantity system.
Evidence for the date of the Middle Dutch quantity changes can come from several sources. If orthography indicates length contrasts in both open and closed syllables, it indicates that OSL has not taken place; if contrasts are made in closed syllables but not open ones, it indicates that syllable cut is a relevant part of the system, and may or may not co-occur with open syllable vowel length. Metre can indicate that quantity contrasts are made in open syllables, either directly in the case of weight- sensitive metre, or indirectly if stress-based metre shows weight-sensitive stress patterns. Both orthography and metre are capable of showing that OSL has not taken place. Rhyme, in contrast, can show that OSL has taken place, since it can show that quantity contrasts are not being made. Other sound changes that interact with OSL may also provide evidence as to its dating, but care must be taken to distinguish whether they interact with OSL proper, or with the development of syllable cut. For degemination, the main evidence comes from orthography, particularly from the extension of double consonant graphemes to unetymological environments; this indicates that degemination had taken place by ca. 1350, and perhaps by the late 1200s.
136
Chapter Seven: Conclusion
I have shown that a mora-sharing analysis of syllable cut, in which abrupt cut involves
the sharing of a mora between the vowel and a postvocalic consonant, is successful at
accounting for the facts of syllable cut in the realms of phonology, phonetics and
markedness; thus, alternative theories of prosody are not needed in order to account for
syllable cut. I have shown that Modern Dutch fulfils the distinguishing characteristics of
a syllable cut language as established in the recent syllable cut revival: in particular, it
requires abruptly cut syllables to be closed, and open smoothly cut syllables are light. It
also shows other characteristics of syllable cut, including allowing greater coda
complexity under abrupt cut, and requiring schwa to have smooth cut; the latter point explains the striking parallels between the behaviour of schwa and ‘long vowels’, which is problematic in a quantity analysis. Further research on syllable cut in Dutch could investigate the place of diphthongs and the phonetically long but lax loan vowels ([],
[] and [œ]) mentioned in note 11 on p. xx above.
Since West Germanic had a quantity system and modern Dutch has syllable cut,
a historical change from the one to the other must have taken place. I have shown that
the Middle Dutch quantity changes, like the Middle High German and Middle English
changes, include aspects that are inexplicable in a pure quantity account, but
understandable in terms of a transition from quantity to syllable cut. Working towards
the dating of the Middle Dutch quantity changes, I have outlined the kinds of evidence
that can be given by orthography, rhyme, metre, and related sound changes, and
delineated also what the various sources of evidence cannot show, and what pitfalls
should be avoided in working with them. Further research is needed to determine just
137 what these various sources indicate about the date of the quantity changes. This would involve closer investigation of texts, especially those from the early Middle Dutch period, in light of these indicators.
138
References
Auer, Peter, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann. 2002. Introduction: Syllable cut and tonal accents. Two ‘exceptional prosodies’ of Germanic and some thoughts on their mutual relationship. Silbenschnitt und Tonakzente, ed. by Peter Auer, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann, 1–10. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Becker, Thomas. 1998. Das Vokalsystem der deutschen Standardsprache. Bern: Peter Lang.
Becker, Thomas. 2002. Silbenschnitt und Silbenstruktur in der deutschen Standardsprache der Gegenwart. Silbenschnitt und Tonakzente, ed. by Peter Auer, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann, 87–101. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Booij, Geert E. 1981. Generatieve fonologie van het Nederlands. Aula-Paperback 55, Utrecht-Antwerpen.
Booij, Geert E. 1995. The phonology of Dutch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broselow, Ellen, Su-I Chen, and Marie Huffman. 1997. Syllable weight: Convergence of phonology and phonetics. Phonology 14.47–82.
Bye, Patrik. 2005. Coda maximisation in Northwest Saamic. Nordic journal of linguistics 28.189–221.
Cohen, A., C. L. Ebeling, P. Eringa, K. Fokkema, and A. G. F. van Holk. 1959. Fonologie van het Nederlands en het Fries. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
De Groot, A. W. 1931. De wetten der phonologie en hun betekenis voor de studie van het Nederlands. De nieuwe taalgids 25.225–243. Republished online by digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren (dbnl) [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/groo006wett01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 28, 2005).
139
De Rijk, Rudolf P. G. 1967. Apropos of the Dutch vowel system. Previously unpublished paper, May 1967, 38 pages. Published online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/rijk004apro01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 17, 2005).
De Schutter, Georges. 1994. Dutch. The Germanic languages, ed. by Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera, 439–477. London: Routledge.
Donaldson, B.C. 1983. Dutch: A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium. Leiden: Martijnus Nijhoff.
Dresher, B. Elan. 2000. Analogical levelling of vowel length in West Germanic. Analogy, levelling, markedness: Principles of change in phonology and morphology, ed. by Aditi Lahiri, 301–332. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dresher, B. Elan, and Aditi Lahiri. 1991. Metrical coherence in Germanic. Linguistic inquiry 11.47–73.
Féry, Caroline. 1996. German foot and word stress in OT. Nordlyd 24.63–96.
Fikkert, Paula. 2000. Prosodic variation in ‘Lutgart’. Analogy, levelling, markedness: Principles of change in phonology and morphology, ed. by Aditi Lahiri, 301–332. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gamon, Michael. 1996. German word stress in a restricted metrical stress theory. Linguistische Berichte 162.107–136.
Goossens, Jan. 1974. Historische phonologie des Niederländischen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Gysseling, Maurits. 1961. Proeve van een Oudnederlandse grammatica (Eerste deel). Studia Germanica Gandensia 3.9–52.
Gysseling, Maurits. 1963. De statuten van de Gentse leprozerie van 1236. Studia Germanica Gandensia 5.9–43.
140
Hayes, Bruce P. 1989. Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic inquiry 20.253–306.
Heeroma, K. 1959. De plaats van ie, oe en uu in het Nederlandse klinkersysteem. De nieuwe taalgids 52.297–304. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/heer023plaa01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 18, 2005).
Hoole, Philip, and Christine Mooshammer. 2002. Articulatory analysis of the German vowel system. Silbenschnitt und Tonakzente, ed. by Peter Auer, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann, 129–152. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Hyman, Larry M. 1985. A theory of phonological weight. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Kager, René. 1990. Dutch schwa in moraic phonology. Papers from the regional meetings, Chicago Linguistic Society 2.241–255.
Kager, René, and Wim Zonneveld. 1986. Schwa, syllables, and extrametricality in Dutch. The linguistic review 5.197–221. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/kage001schw01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 28, 2005).
Kooij, Jan G. 1980. Morpheme boundaries and syllable boundaries: A case for Natural Phonology. Dutch studies 4: Studies in Dutch phonology, ed. by Wim Zonneveld, Frans van Coetsem, and Orrin W. Robinson, 61–78. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Kraehenmann, Astrid. 2003. Quantity and prosodic asymmetries in Alemannic: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Künzel, R. E., D. P. Blok, and J. M. Verhoeff. 1989. Lexicon van nederlandse toponiemen tot 1200. Amsterdam: P. J. Meertens-Instituut voor Dialectologie, Volkskunde en Naamkunde.
Kyes, Robert L. 1969. The Old Low Franconian psalms and glosses. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
141
Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The sounds of the world’s languages. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lahiri, Aditi, and B. Elan Dresher. 1999. Open syllable lengthening in West Germanic. Language 75.678–719.
Le Roux, Thomas H. and Jacobus J. Le Roux. 1969. Middelnederlandse grammatika. 6th edn. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik, PBK.
Maas, Utz, and Doris Tophinke. 1993. Loser und fester Anschluß. Versuch der Neubewertung einer abgelegten Kategorie. Sprachwandel und Sprachgeschichte: Festschrift für Helmut Lüdtke zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Jürgen Schmidt- Radefeldt and Andreas Harder, 133–51. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Morén, Bruce. 2001. Distinctiveness, coercion, and sonority: A unified theory of weight. London: Routledge.
Moulton, William G. 1962. The vowels of Dutch: Phonetic and distributional classes. Lingua 11.294–312. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/moul004vowe01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 17, 2005).
Murray, Robert W. 2000. Syllable cut prosody in Early Middle English. Language 76.617–54.
Murray, Robert W. 2002. Syllable cut prosody in Early Modern English. John Hart’s testimony. Silbenschnitt und Tonakzente, ed. by Peter Auer, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann, 103–127. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Murray, Robert W. 2006. The Bavarian quantity changes: From classical quantity to syllable cut. Paper presented at the 80th meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque, January 5.
Murray, Robert W. In press. Paradoxes, probabilities, and preferences: The Luickian edifice revisited, noch einmal. Festschrift X.
142
Murray, Robert W. and Theo Venneman. 1983. Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59.514–528.
Nooteboom, S. G. 1971. Over de lengte van korte klinkers, lange klinkers en tweeklanken in het Nederlands. De nieuwe taalgids 64.396–402. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/noot004leng01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 17, 2005).
Piggott, Glyne L. 1995. Epenthesis and syllable weight. Natural language and linguistic theory 13.283–326.
Quak, Arend. 1995. Über die Dehnung in offener Silbe im älteren Niederländischen. Quantitätsproblematik und Metrik. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik 42, Special volume, Greifswalder Symposion zur germanischen Grammatik. 150–157.
Restle, David. 2003. Silbenschnitt – Quantität – Kopplung: Zur Geschichte, Charakterisierung und Typologie der Anschlußprosodie. Münich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Schiller, Niels O., Antje S. Meyer, & Willem J. M. Levelt. 1997. The syllabic structure of spoken words: Evidence from the syllabification of intervocalic consonants. Language and speech 40.103–140.
Schönfeld, M. 1964. Historische grammatica van het Nederlands. 7th edn. by Adolphe van Loey. Zutphen: N.V. W. J. Thieme & Cie.
Shaw, Patricia A, Susan J. Blake, Jill Campbell, & Cody Shepherd. 1999. Stress in
hnqminm (Musqueam) Salish. UBC working papers in linguistics 2.131–163.
Sievers, Eduard. 1901. Grundzüge der Phonetik, 5th edition. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.
143
Spiekermann, Helmut. 2002. Ein akustisches Korrelat des Silbenschnitts: Formen des Intensitätsverlaufs in Silbenschnitt- und Tonakzentsprachen. Silbenschnitt und Tonakzente, ed. by Peter Auer, Peter Gilles, and Helmut Spiekermann, 181–199. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Trommelen, Mieke. 1984. The syllable in Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1962. Grundzüge der Phonologie, 3rd edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Van Bree, Cor. 1987. Historische grammatica van het Nederlands. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Van der Hulst, Harry. 1985. Ambisyllabicity in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1985, ed. by Hans Bennis et al., 57–66. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huls009ambi01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 17, 2005).
Van der Meer, M. J. 1927. Historische Grammatik der niederländischen Sprache. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Van Ginneken, Jac. 1934. Het phonologisch systeem van het Algemeen Nederlandsch. Onze taaltuin 2.353–365. Republished online by dbnl [2002] at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/ginn001phon01/index.htm (accessed Nov. 17, 2005).
Van Loey, Adolphe. 1962. Geminatie. Bulletin de la Commision Royale de Toponymie & Dialectologie = Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor toponymie en dialectologie 36.83–99.
Van Loey, Adolphe. 1976. Middelnederlandse spraakkunst. Vol. 2: Klankleer. 7th edn. Groningen: H. D. Tjeenk Willink.
144
Van Marle, Jaap. 1980. The stress patterns of Dutch simplex words: A first approximation. Dutch studies 4: Studies in Dutch phonology, ed. by Wim Zonneveld, Frans van Coetsem, and Orrin W. Robinson, 79–121. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Van Wijk, Nicolaas. 1939. Phonologie: een hoofdstuk uit de structurele taalwetenschap. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Van Wijk, Nicolaas. 1940a. Quantiteit en intonatie. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.
Van Wijk, Nicolaas. 1940b. “Silbenschnitt” en quantiteit. Onze taaltuin 9.229–235.
Van Wijk, Nicolaas. 1941. Scherp en zwak gesneden klinkers. Nieuwe taalgids 35.15–24.
Vennemann, Theo. 1988. The rule dependence of syllable structure. On language: Rhetorica, phonologica, syntactica: A festschrift for Robert P. Stockwell from his friends and colleagues, ed. by Caroline Duncan-Rose and Theo Vennemann.
Vennemann, Theo. 1990. Syllable structure and simplex accent in Modern Standard German. Papers from the regional meetings, Chicago Linguistic Society 2.241– 255.
Vennemann, Theo. 1991. Syllable structure and syllable cut prosodies in modern Standard German. Certamen Phonologicum II. Papers from the 1990 Cortona phonology meeting, ed. by Pier Marc Bertinetto, Michael Kenstowicz & Michele Loporcaro, 211–243.
Vennemann, Theo. 1994. Universelle Nuklearphonologie mit epiphänomenaler Silbenstruktur. Universale phonologische Strukturen und Prozesse, ed. by Karl Heinz Ramers, Heinz Vater, and Henning Wode, 7–54. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Vennemann, Theo. 2000. From quantity to syllable cuts: On so-called lengthening in the Germanic languages. Italian Journal of Linguistics 12.251–282.
145
Vennemann, Theo. 2004. Akzent vs. Rhythmus. Handout, University of Munich, July 9, 2004.
Wiese, Richard. 1996. The Phonology of German. Oxford: Clarendon.
Willemyns, Roland. 2003. Het verhaal van het Vlaams: de geschiedenis van het Nederlands in de Zuidilijke Nederlanden. Ed. by Wim Daniëls. Utrecht: Het Spectrum.
Wright, Joseph, and Elizabeth M. Wright. 1925. Old English grammar. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zonneveld, Wim. 1993. 700 jaar Nederlandse klemtoon (en weinig veranderd). Spektator 22.198–222.
Zonneveld, Wim. 2000. The Ormulum and the Lutgart: Early Germanic iambs in context. Parergon 18:1, special issue: Medieval English measures: Studies in metre and versification. 27–52.