Guys: Please keep it frontchannel (or cc me).
Mark (interested in all fricatives)
At 05:47 PM 11/30/2008, you wrote:
>From: "Roger Collett" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>>Sorry to ramble on but:
>
>Me too -- I think with this, I finally catch up on posts which
>accumulated while I was asleep!!!
>
>(I think the obvious answer of simply switching all this bachchannel
>is that while this must be phenomenally boring to most of the list,
>there does seem to be a [surprisingly] significant minority who are
>engaged with the issue. Well, at least with a clear subject-line,
>it's easy to skip or delete if you aren't interested in the
>thread. Just a thot.)
>
>>Were there two distinct sounds?
>
>When I raised the issue initially, it never occurred to me that
>there weren't (2 distinct sounds). I still think this, but Doubts
>are beginning to Creep In.
>
>{There's also the problem of "distinct" vs. "distinctive" -- the
>beginnings of "thee" and "thy" (have I already said this?) are
>distinct in modern English, but not particularly distinctive to the
>*ear of a modern English(es) speaker.}
>
>>How do we know there were two distinct sounds? We only have the text!!!
>
>Well, yeah -- there are caveats. But there are ways to infer how
>words were pronounced. One of the useful things about sound-changes
>is that they are incredibly consistent, which is why the
>reverse-engineering of pronunciation is possible.
>
>>>(b) Was there a period in Proto-Germanic (the ur-language which
>>>later divided up into English, German, Norse, etc.) when there was
>>>a single sound which later split into voiced and voiceless velar fricatives?
>>
>>Probably.
>
>I think I'd agree.
>
>>>(c) Hypothetically, does the composition, as opposed to the
>>>earliest written text, of Beowulf, represent a period before this split?
>>
>>Not necessarily, as they could BOTH be before any split!
>
>Yup. :-(((
>
>And there's the further problem (which I think dave was the first to
>raise elsewhere) that the current dating of the writing-down of
>Beowulf seems to have been pushed forward from the 8th C to about 1010.
>
>Oh dear -- elephgnats all the way down!!!
>
>Robin
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