Old English vowels: Diachrony, privativity, and phonological representations

Abstract

Old English underwent diachronic change in its vowel inventory between its predecessor West Germanic and Middle English. We provide an analysis of the addition and loss of vowels in Old English from the perspective of modified contrastive specification (Dresher et al. 1994). Three main themes emerge from our analysis: (i) the phonological representation of contrast in the vowels in English has remained remarkably stable for over a thousand years, (ii) the proposed analysis improves upon and supersedes similar analyses proposed in Dresher 2015 and Purnell & Raimy 2015, and (iii) the adoption of privative features provides an improved representationally based understanding of phonological activity, feature geometry, and how phonology reflects general cognitive features of memory.*

Rhotic underspecification: Deriving variability and arbitrariness through phonological representations

“…In order to model these relationships, I adopt the position that the phonology defines abstract contrastive relationships (Hall 2007;Dresher 2009) and that these contrasts are marked privatively (Iverson & Salmons 1995;Avery & Idsardi 2001). These categories are subsequently converted into pronounceable phonetic forms through a series of (at least three) modular interfaces (Purnell & Raimy 2015;Purnell et al 2019). Throughout the remainder of this section, I present this model of the sound system as the foundation for a cohesive phonological representation of rhotics that is sensitive to language-specific phonemic inventories.…”

“…Mester & Itô 1989;Lombardi 1996). Arguments that draw on the privative composition of features are rooted in analyses for a range of phonological phenomena, including palatalization (Mester & Itô 1989), laryngeal assimilations (Iverson & Salmons 1995;Avery & Idsardi 2001;Allen 2016), vowel diachrony (Purnell & Raimy 2015;Kwon 2019;Purnell et al 2019), phonetic and phonological contact (Natvig 2019), and historical rhotic patterns in Germanic (Natvig & Salmons forthcoming).…”

“…A further insight from this line of research, specifically from Avery & Idsardi (2001) and developed in Purnell & Raimy (2015) and Purnell et al (2019), is the proposal that the phonology operates on structures that are more abstract than traditional features, what Avery & Idsardi (2001) call dimensions. These are nodes within a unified feature geometry that organize mutually exclusive articulatory gestures (Avery & Idsardi 2001: 44-45).…”

“…Finally, I concur that privative analyses require clear parameters to distinguish between active phonological processes on the one hand, and passive phonetic coarticulations on the other. For example, Purnell et al (2019) examine the symmetrical fronting and backing processes in Old English using privative marking for only front vowels (see Section 3.2). I address this issue further with suggestions for some general characteristics of modular behavior in Section 4.2.…”

“…To advance the phonological understanding of rhotics, I propose a representational definition for liquids and rhotics as underspecified and unspecified consonantal sonorants, respectively (Section 3.3). The framework for this proposal draws on Modified Contrastive Specification (MCS; Dresher et al 1994) and a modular organization of the sound system (Purnell & Raimy 2015;Purnell et al 2019). Phonological representations are based on abstract contrastive relationships between sounds in a given phonemic inventory.…”