Re: Brithenig diphthongs (was: Yiddish influences in Brithenig)

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@macline.co.uk>]

At 4:33 pm +1200 13/5/98, Andrew Smith wrote:
>On Tue, 12 May 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> >> Yeah - I think three possibilities for {ae} and {oe}
>> >> i. The diphthongs fall together with {ai} and {oi} as /ai/ & /oi/
>> >>respectively;
>> >> ii. They developed (as in certain South Walian dialects) to /a:/ and
>>/o:/;
>> >> iii. Their development was not uniform in Brithenig, some dialects
>>merging
>> >> them with /ai/ and /oi/, others developing "long diphthongs" like Dutch
>> >> {aai} and {ooi}. i.e. /a:i/ and /o:i/, while others developed simply the
>> >> long vowels /a:/ and /o:/.
>> >>
>> >> The third is the one I'd favor, with /a:i/ & /o:i/ perhaps being looked
>> >> upon as "official".  Similar long diphthongs also occurred in ancient
>>
>If ae and oe are long diphthongs/vowels in some dialects does this mean
>the stress has shifted?

Why?

I'm not aware of vowel length having any function in Brithenig.  As I
understand it _quality_, i.e. tenseness or laxity, are concomitant upon
stress; I've not been aware of any quantitative difference.

It's true that some languages have length as a feature of stress, e.g.
modern Greek where stressed vowels are longer than unstressed.  But in
modern Greek there is no qualitative difference between stressed &
unstressed vowels.

There is no inherent connexion between quality & quantity.  I think
confusion arises sometimes because the so-called "short" vowels of Standard
Southern British English are lax and the "long" are tense (this is by no
means the case in all varieties of English).  But the terms "long" &
"short" in this context are traditional and misleading; length distinction
does exist in English but is not phonemic.  In "Standard Southern British
English" the 'a' of 'bad' is long but that of 'cat' is short (the _quality_
is the same in both - the "ash" sound denoted by the a-e ligature in IPA).

Indeed, French shows a clear case where tense vowel /e/ is always short,
but the lax vowel /E/ is always long.

Certainly languages with fixed stress on the initial syllable often allow
long vowels in unstressed syllable, cf. modern Finnish, Hungarian and
pre-Classical Latin.

Final syllable stressed languages seem to be less common, but I know of no
reason why long vowels may not occur in unstressed positions.  If, as I'd
think likely, the onset of the long diphthongs was _lax_ (as certainly
appears to have been the case in ancient Greek & is so in those varieties
of English where /ai/ is promounced [A:j]) then this fits well within
Brithening phonotactics.

The question, I suppose, is whether length distinction would've arisen
between two sets of diphthongs, but not elsewhere.  That is a different
matter.  On reflexion I can see problems here.  The obvious reason would be
that original /ae/ and /oe/ developed to /a:/ and /o:/ in some dialects but
fell together with /ai/ & /oi/ in others; an artificially "correct"
pronunciation /a:i/ and /o:i/ was developed by the educated.

Such things do happen. A well known example of something similar is the 3rd
person plural of the Latin perfect tense.  The evidence is that in spoken
Latin some dialects had -erunt (with sort, unstressed /E/) and others had
-e:re (with long stressed /e/).  The normal Classical form, as verse shows,
was -e:runt which was almost certainly an artificial compromise affected by
the educated upper classes.  (The Romance langs all derive their forms from
-erunt with short /E/).

Raifun.



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