Excellent, Christopher -- that really answers my question!!!
<<
Anyway here goes.
...
Wren:
'The alliterating g of [line 1] shows that at any early date the front
['year'] and the back ['gear'] positions of g still retained their original
fricative or spirant quality; for it is this spirantal quality which makes
the alliteration. Pronounced in the later classical Anglo-Saxon of Ælfric's
time, when the MS was copied, there would be no true alliteration.'
You can then go on (that is, One can; I certainly can't) to assert some sort
of dating of the Original Oral Text, based upon this principle.
>>
Well, one could go too far with this, but it's perhaps non-trivial. If
Wrenn's comment, "Pronounced in the later classical Anglo-Saxon of Ælfric's
time, when the MS was copied, there would be no true alliteration," is
correct, it strongly calls into question Kevin S. Kiernan's contention that
the poem was *composed at the time the Beowulf MS as we have it was written
down, about 1010 AD.
The poem would necessarily have been composed at a period when the sounds,
"still retained their original fricative or spirant quality," so we're back
to the 8th C, at least.
(On Kiernan and the dating issue, see
http://www.beowulftranslations.net/dating.shtml.)
I've only one thing to add to Christopher's immaculate post, which I picked
up the other night from the class notes to English 401 at the University of
Calagary, which directs as how to distinguish which "g" is where:
***
5) The letter g is pronounced with a "hard" g sound (i.e. the sound in the
Modern English words give and grape) if it comes before a back vowel (like o
or a) or another consonant. If it comes before a front vowel (like i or e),
or at the end of a word following a front vowel, it is usually pronounced
like Modern English y in yes or yellow.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/lessons/pronunc1.htm#sources
***
<<
Grimm's Law, Verner's Law... and now Walker's Law: Just this one post and
then stop.
>>
As to Grimm's Law and the Great Sound Shift, which Candice optimistically
<g> asked me to explain, and and Verner's Law, I cop out of this by
pleading that, like Candice, my own copy of Campbell's Grammar is currently
in store and unavailable.
Perhaps Christopher, who seems to be the only person on the list who has
access to it, might care to venture?
Or there's always Wiki, which I looked at after Candice raised the point
backchannel, and which seems in this instance fairly reliable.
Thanks again, Christopher.
Robin
|