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Title:
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North and West Germanic Consonant Gemination: A philological and phonetic renalysis
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Author:
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Jeannette Denton
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Homepage:
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http://www.baylor.edu/~Jeannette_Denton/
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Chicago
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1999
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Historical Linguistics
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Language Family(ies):
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North Germanic
West Germanic
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Director(s):
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Anthony Buccini
Karen Landahl
Robert Howell
Bill Darden
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Abstract:
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This project examines sonorant-conditioned consonant geminations in the early North and West Germanic branch of languages. It begins with the hypothesis that because geminations conditioned by y, w, r, and l occur in languages possessing different prosodic systems, phonological inventories, and syllabifications, geminations of this type likely have their origins in coarticulatory effects of sonorants on preceding consonants. Two main tests of this hypothesis are presented here. The first is a review of what previous scholars have said concerning North and West Germanic Consonant Gemination's realm of application, its degree of regularity and its exceptions. This is followed by a careful examination of 28 Old High German manuscripts for orthographical evidence of gemination and its failure. The second test is an acoustic analysis of American English consonants spoken by three subjects in word-internal pre-sonorant environments similar to those in which West Germanic Consonant Gemination occurred. From these investigations, it is shown that West Germanic Consonant Gemination was fairly regular in its effect on consonants following short vowels and the geminating power of environments traditionally described as less productive may have been limited only by the frequency of the words in which they occurred. A significant feature of the West Germanic geminates is that many of them failed to merge with existing geminates, suggesting that those generated through the West Germanic process were different from other consonants in the inventory. The acoustic analysis reveals a possible explanation for this. Stops and fricative in pre-sonorant environments generally had longer VOTs and/or stronger constriction releases, while sonorants in pre-glide positions had longer constriction durations. These findings indicate that the geminate stops and fricatives which resulted from the North and West Germanic processes may have been fortis articulations rather than true geminates. This hypothesis is developed through an examination of contemporaneous sound changes in North and West Germanic which produces consonants with affricated or strengthened articulations. It is concluded that the seeds of gemination were brought about through coarticulation, but the spread of the change in Germanic was conditioned by the listerners' identification of these stronger articulations with other phonological patterns in the language.
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Page Updated: 26-Nov-2009
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