A study on vowel lengthening with resyllabification in Old English

재음절화에 의한 장모음화 연구

  • Received : 20050100
  • Accepted : 20050300
  • Published : 2005.03.30

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze vowel lengthening triggered by resyllabification. In general, short vowels become long when a following consonant is deleted, as shown in stehli 'steel' > st$\bar{e}$li and *fimf 'five' > five. We can account for the phenomenon in a straightforward way within the framework of CV phonology (Clements & Keyser, 1983) : deletion of a coda consonant C slot and then the preceding vowel spreads onto it, resulting in a long vowel. The analysis, however, cannot hold for words like ealhes 'temple', where deletion of an onset segment eventually triggers vowel lengthening in the preceding syllable. In order to account for this, I propose resyllabification. That is, ealhes first becomes eales by /h/-deletion. Next, the /l/ in coda is resyllabified as the onset of the following syllable, leaving its C slot unoccupied. Finally, the vowel spreads onto the empty slot, producing a long vowel.

Keywords