Quantity adjustment: vowel lengthening and shortening in early middle English

This is a unified account of all quantity changes affecting English stressed vowels during the early Middle English period. Dr Ritt discusses homorganic lengthening, open syllable lengthening, trisyllabic shortening, and shortening before consonant clusters. The study is based on a statistical analy...

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1. Verfasser: Ritt, Nikolaus 1960- (VerfasserIn)
Format: Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1994
Schriftenreihe:Cambridge studies in linguistics
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Zusammenfassung:This is a unified account of all quantity changes affecting English stressed vowels during the early Middle English period. Dr Ritt discusses homorganic lengthening, open syllable lengthening, trisyllabic shortening, and shortening before consonant clusters. The study is based on a statistical analysis of Modern English reflexes of the changes. The complete corpus of analysed data is made available to the reader in the appendices. All of the changes discussed are shown to derive from basically the same set of quasi-universal tendencies, while apparent idiosyncrasies are shown to follow from factors that are independent of the underlying tendencies themselves. The role of tendencies, i.e. probabilistic laws in the description of language change, is given thorough theoretical treatment. In his aim to account for the changes as well as trace their chronology, Dr Ritt applies principles of natural phonology, and examines the conflict between phonological and morphological 'necessities'
Beschreibung:Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
Beschreibung:1 online resource (x, 206 pages)
ISBN:9780511597831
DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511597831