In: Folia Linguistica Historica (5.2), 1984, 279-303 Remarks on assimilation in Old English Raymond Hickey University of Bonn Both throughout the course of Old English and in the transition from Old to Middle English a large number of changes in the phonological structure of both morphologically simple and morphologically complex word forms had far reaching consequences for the development of English in the areas of inflectional and derivational morphology often having the effect in the latter area of opacifying the derivational process with subsequent lexicalization of originally compounded forms. The changes I am referring to here are known collectively as assimilation. The basic justification for this term is that dissimilar segments become, through the operation of this process, more alike in one of several aspects. These respects can be identified and classified. I would like however in this treatment to subsume not only assimilation under the title of this paper but also dissimilation. There are cogent reasons for this. Firstly assimilation and dissimilation are really two sides of the one coin, the principles governing assimilation also govern dissimilation, or at least their converse do. Secondly many changes in phonological structure in Old English are in fact both assimilation and dissimilation in combination. For example the shift /l2/ to /ld/ is assimilation in terms of place of articulation and voice and dissimilation in terms of place of the continuancy of both segments. Just as one can, for example, use the term ‘voice’ to talk of segments which are either voiced or voiceless, I will use the term ‘assimilation’ in a general sense to cover both assimilation and dissimilation and a combination of the two. To start with let me make the normal distinction between assimilation of place and manner of articulation. Both of these must be further subdivided immediately. The former has a fourfold division. (1) a labial b dental c alveolar d velar I have not posited a palatal articulation in Old English for while this by all means existed (with the obstruents /t$/, /dg/, /$/, /j/) assimilations which take place to them are alveolar, if the assimilated segment is anterior to the assimilating one, compare (2) of3rect /of2re$t/ ‘oppresses’ ( < of3re¨ + (i)p ) Assimilations to palatals of elements which are posterior to them, i.e. velars, are unknown as palatals themselves are the result of an assimilation process and if the determining palatal environment becomes velar (as in vowel alternation) then they revert to a velar articulation. Raymond Hickey Remarks on assimilation in Old English Page 2 of 19 For ease of presentation and because it is without theoretical significance for the matter at hand I use simple place of articulation labels (with the upper passive articulator as the point of reference) rather than the canonical set of the four features [anterior], [coronal], [high] and [back] which normally would in appropriate combinations be used to characterize the positions in (1). In addition there are substantial arguments in favour of a series of features directly referring to points on the upper articulator for general phonological analysis, for a discussion of these see Hickey (1984a) and Ladefoged (1971: 36-45). For a treatment of assimilation of manner the various categories of segments which differ in manner, e.g. nasals, liquids, stops, affricates, fricatives do not have to be considered in the way just listed but only three features of various manner types are necessary for an analysis, as assimilation can only involve these three maximally. They are (3) a [continuant] b [voice] c [sonorant] On assimilation segments may change one or more of these features. My concern below will be to determine what is the motivation for the assimilations recorded, how regular they are in terms of the entire phonology of Old English and describing exactly the factors which are responsible for the form which the assimilations take. A basic principle which I subscribe to is that assimilation is determined by the phonotactics of Old English. By phonotactics I understand the principles which govern the ordering of phonological segments. These can be divided into basic types. (4) (i) principles concerning syllable structures (ii) principles concerning the ordering of phonological segments which are not exhaustively covered by (i). This definition of phonotactics may seem somewhat clumsy at first so let me expand on what is intended by it. First of all for Old English just as for any language there are principles which determine how syllables are to be structured in terms of the relative consonantal or vocalic character of segments which are in the onset, nucleus or coda of a syllable. This means that assuming a vocalic core for the nucleus the structure of the onset and the coda will be determined by the consonantal quality of segments. The term consonantal strength can be used here assuming voiceless stops to be most consonantal and sonorants, glides and of course vowels to be least consonantal. Put in reverse terms there is a resonance strength scale which decreases the more one moves away from the nucleus of a syllable. Such general statements can be held to be true of any language in fact. They can be summarized as (5) Principle of increasing resonance Resonance of segments increases towards the nucleus of a syllable There are at least three difficulties with this. The first is not usually treated as a difficulty by phonologists although phoneticians have devoted an inordinate amount of energy to it, namely how can one define a syllable, and hence determine its nucleus? Despite the many attempts of phoneticians one can regard this question as still unsolved. Nonetheless phonologists and indeed linguistically native speakers have a Raymond Hickey Remarks on assimilation in Old English Page 3 of 19 notion of how many syllables exist in a word and the degree of dissent on syllable number judgment is astonishingly low. For phonological analysis syllables need to be recognizable if only an intuitive and unarticulated basis. To leave the matter at this is not so much to deliberately avoid defining a parameter which one makes use of as to exploit the consensus which exists on the recognition of this parameter. The second difficulty with the principle in (5) is one which concerns phonetics also. How can one reach a definition of resonance which can be phonetically determined and be successfully applied to a given segment in determining it in terms of resonance? The answer is simply that one cannot but one can establish values of relative resonance for certain segments which on comparison allow one to label a given segment as more or less resonant than another segment. This is a phonological procedure, as can already be seen from the use f the phonetically fictious term ‘segment’. Values of relative resonance are reached by considering the values which segments have fro the three features given in (3). A consequence of this is that assimilation is a change in resonance value. Resonance increases from (3)a to (3)c. Thus /f/ is more resonant than /p/. The phonetic correlate of this is the length of /f/, whose nature is that of an uninterrupted articulation, whereas /p/ is phonetically silence with the ensuing format bending (Sanders 1977: 35ff.) or just the aspiration (in final position after a sonorant, say) which is characteristic of labials. /z/ is more resonant than /s/ also. Phonetically the correlation here is the double articulation, /s/ has alveolar constriction, /z/ has alveolar constriction and glottal articulation (vocal fold vibration). Although I have not given a definition of resonance in phonetically absolute terms I have at least given two phonetic correlates of relative phonological resonance, uninterrupted articulation and vocal fold vibration. A phonetic correlate of the difference between voiced (non-sonorant) segments and sonorants also exists. It is the absence of noise (in the acoustic-phonetic sense, see Fry 1979: 88ff.) and the presence of an identifiable formant structure for sonorants and the reverse of these features for voiced non-sonorant segments. Obviously the term sonorant, as a cover term for these two phonetic features cannot be used for all segments which may phonologically be sonorants. Thus in Irish palatal /r"/ is frequently a post-alveolar apical fricative [z] and so phonetically non-sonorant but phonologically (because of is morphonemic alternation with /r/) it is still [+sonorant]. For Old English, the discussion is purely phonological as phonetic details are obviously indeterminable. The third difficulty with (5) is a phonological one. Given the phonetic correlates of relative resonance it should be a mechanical procedure to assign each phonological segment a relative resonance value. But in fact the placement of certain segments relative to each other on a resonance scale is disputable. It would seem that place on the relative resonance scale varies from language to language and within a given language. For Icelandic Murray and Vennemann (1983: 83) give a scale where /r/ is nearer to vowels like /l/ as does Hooper for (American) Spanish (1976: 208) and for Pāli (1976:205) in the discussion of assimilation from Hankramer and Aissen (1974) (on the latter see Murray (1981:176) as well). For Irish all sonorants seem to be equal in the modern language as they interchange allophonically after stops (e.g. the word for ‘knitting’ is either /kn"ita:l"/ or /kl"ita:l"/ or /kr"ita:l"/). On the other hand /r/ tends to drop the essential distinction among consonants in Irish between palatal and non-palatal articulation when it is in an initial position whereas /l/ does not, cf. /l"abq/ [l"@:bq] ‘bed’ but /r"aur/ [raur]. In this respect it is less consonantal and so nearer vowels on a resonance scale.
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