Subject: Re: yogh alliteration in BEOWULF -- Kiernan naked
> <snip>
> Oh, apparently the *avoidance of [y]/[g] alliteration occurs at least as
> early as texts, such as Brunaburgh, dating from about 970.
> <snip>
>
> How in such a short text does avoidance manifest itself in a way that is
> different from, say, absence?
>
> CW
Dunno -- I'm simply quoting.
Black swans -- the absence of presence is not necessarily the presence of
absence, nah?
But it turned on not just Brunaburgh but a series 970 poetic and non etc.,
texts, apparently temporally locked-into when they occur in the Chronicle.
But for god's sake, don't shoot the messenger!
{But it does suggest that when I said that the [g]/[y] minimal pair was a
gone goose by GGK, I was being Deeply Conservative.}
<Even as early as Aelfrich and Wulfstan too, but.>
Meep!!
Mark-me-down-as-Derrida-and-call-my-swan-an'nuncle
Robin.
(Hah! Reminds me of the time when I tried to float an argument as to the
canon of Wyatt's poetry based on graphmemic/phonological variants on the
Five Instances of Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Egerton, Devonshire, Arundel, Tottel,
and Blage.
Nothing like a Wyatt argument to leave blood on the tracks.
<g>
R.}
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