And how fully was the text we have "literary?" Which means that
there would have been intermediate redactions. As in the middle
english which you wanted to skip over, where the Pearl Poet uses w
and and sometimes v interchangeably in Gawain and the Green Knight,
producing a line like "Wawen me wochte," "my name is Gavin."
At 08:15 PM 11/29/2008, you wrote:
>>So, Dr. Hamilton, is this your question: "Why does the author of Beowulf
>>treat, for alliterative purposes, two distinct sounds ['y' as in 'yet', and
>>'g' as in 'get'] as if they were the same?
>
>Yup.
>
>>And, further, you wonder: "Were voiced and voiceless velar fricatives
>>distinct in Proto-Germanic?"
>
>I think that is what is puzzling me.
>
>(a) In Old English of the Eighth Century AD, as reflected in the
>text of Beowulf as we have it, voiced [<g>] and voiceless [<y>]
>velar fricatives [both represented by the yogh character in script]
>were distinct sounds.
>
>(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?
>
>(c) Hypothetically, does the composition, as opposed to the
>earliest written text, of Beowulf, represent a period before this split?
>
>R.
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