MAPA DE PRINCIPIOS DIDÁCTICOS

In recent years some linguists have tried to adduce and define in finer detail the phonetic properties of early Germanic consonants. Plosives, which are traditionally classified simply as voiceless and voiced (/p, t, k/ vs. /b, d, g/), have been the subject of much discussion. Iverson & Salmons (2003) argue that the main distinguishing phonetic feature of Germanic plosives was not that of voice but of aspiration vs. non-aspiration or, to use a different terminology, spread

syllable, i.e. closed by ambysyllabic /n/. This kind of alternation is actually very similar to that found in early Middle English, to judge from the orthography of the Ormulum (see Mailhammer 2007, 2009).

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Schrijver has used the same explanation to explain vowel shortenings in Modern Dutch dialects (1999: 31–3).

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Although the proposal suggested here seems cogent, it is interesting that Swedish and Norwegian dialects, namely austnorsk, sveamål and nordsvenska, show an unexpected lengthening not only of /p, t, k/ but also /s/ and /m/ (Perridon 2002: 73). Especially within the context of Northumbria, where Scandinavian influence is assumed, the notion of Norse influence becomes a possibility. This possibility, however, must be left for later investigators. At present, it is a mystery why /m/ should have been prone to lengthening in these Scandinavian dialects; there seem to be no obvious phonetic reasons for /m/ to lengthen. Saami influence could be considered, but I have not found any leads in this direction. Petri Kallio (p.c.) informs me that there is a change known as medial preclusion involving /m/ in Saami, by which -m- becomes -pm-; however, -n- is also affected by this change, becoming -tn-.

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glottis vs. non-spread glottis: [ph, th, kh] vs. [b̥, d̥, ɡ̊].98 Many modern Germanic languages – e.g. standard varieties of English and German or Scandinavian languages, such as Icelandic and Danish – can be analysed in this way, and Iverson and Salmons have presented several other reasons why this contrast might also be projected back into Proto-Germanic. This situation, however, is not the same across all modern Germanic languages and dialects (including English), leading to suggestions of later influence through language contact.

The best known exception to the aspiration vs. non-aspiration contrast is Dutch, which shows a deviant typology, more similar to that found in French and other Romance languages.99 In Dutch the contrast in the plosives is one of voice: /p, t, k/ vs. /b, d, g/.100 The voiceless consonants, unlike Modern Standard English, have no significant aspiration. Iverson & Salmons (2003) argue on numerous occasions that the Dutch system must be viewed as an innovation, drawing upon the idea that Dutch betrays other Romance influences (2003: 2).101 While there may be some support for the notion of Romance influence on especially southern Dutch dialects, it would be wrong to single out Dutch as the only Germanic language with Romance-type stops. In particular, West Frisian has the same system as Dutch, excepting north-eastern dialects.102 (It is more difficult to establish Romance influence in West Frisian, since it was beyond the pale of the Roman Empire; one wonders then whether Frisian phonation has been influenced by Dutch.) Apart from West Frisian, many Low German dialects also show the Romance-type system of

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It should be noted that /b, d, g/ do have voiced articulation in sonorous environments, especially intervocalicaly, but not initially and finally. Assuming the primacy of initial position, it is correct to represent these stops as /b̥, d̥, ɡ̊/.

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Some eastern Dutch dialects, e.g. the (Saxon) dialect of Groningen, contrast plosives in terms of aspiration vs. non-aspiration. Similar contrastive aspiration has also been observed in some South Hollandic dialects (see van Bree 2004: 68).

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Excepting word final position, where most Dutch dialects have final devoicing. 101

The idea that Dutch has been subject to Romance influence has often been argued for, but has never really been subject to a large-scale study. Iverson & Salmons draw attention to several studies, yet the nature of the posited contact is disputed. For instance, Kloeke (1954) holds French influence responsible not only for the Dutch stops but also for fronting of 〈u〉 to [y:] (e.g. Du. nu [ny:] < WGmc *nū) and vocalisation of /l/ in codas (e.g. Du. koud [kɑut] < WGmc *kald). Other suggested French features in Dutch dialects are velar or uvular /r/ (Weijnen 1958: 262–3) and, especially in southern Dutch dialects, h-dropping (and non-etymological h-insertion) (van Coetsem 1988: 144–62). Van Haeringen (1934: 97) suggests that such changes began in southern dialects and spread north and east. Others have suggested that substrate languages were responsible for the innovations (e.g. Gysseling 1981, Schrijver 1999).

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The situation in conservative island dialects, such as that of Schiermonnikoog, is less clear. My impression, from the few recordings of Schiermonnikoog Frisian which I have heard, is that plosives in this dialect contrast in terms of weak aspiration, in a similar manner to South Hollandic dialects (cf. note 99 above).

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voice distinction. Kurt Goblirsch has drawn attention to southern Low German and northern Middle German dialects. Though he accepts that Romance or Celtic influence could be posited for Dutch (he also accepts that Finnish could have influenced eastern Swedish dialects where voiceless plosives are not aspirated), he argues that neither Romance nor Slavic influence could explain the lack of aspiration in Ripuarian, South Westphalian, South Eastphalian, North Thuringian and northern Upper Saxon (2005: 78–80; but see Kortlandt 2007 for a different view). Important in the present context, is that English dialects also present a mixed picture, for it is a well-known tendency for northern and Scottish dialects to have unaspirated voiceless stops too.

The lack of aspiration in voiceless plosives in northern English dialects and Lowland Scots has often been noticed by phoneticians and dialectologists, e.g. Wells (1982: 370): ‘There are some kinds of northern accent which have little or no aspiration of /p, t, k/ before a stressed vowel (the environment where most other accents do have aspiration)’, and Johnston (1997: 505): ‘early authorities are united as to the unaspirated nature of Scots voiceless stops in syllable onsets’.103 Unfortunately, this dialectal feature was not targeted specifically in either the Survey of English Dialects or the Survey of Scottish Dialects (cf. Orton et al. 1962–71, Mather et al. 1975–86); however, in the former, the fieldworkers note the reduced or complete lack of aspiration among many of the Yorkshire and Lancashire informants (a list of these fieldworkers’ notes is provided in Jones 2007: 1).104 Despite the fact that the feature is rather well-known, to my knowledge only one detailed study has so far used advanced instrumental analysis to measure voiced onset timing in such non-aspirating dialects, namely Jones’ recent analysis of /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/ spoken by a speakers from Barnsley in the West Riding of Yorkshire (2007). In brief, Jones’s study confirms that the voice onset timings of one speaker of the older, traditional Barnsley dialect are strikingly different from those of conventional southern English or Received Pronunciation speakers, but he also notes that this feature is now recessive among younger speakers. The feature is also recessive in Lowland Scots, especially in the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as surrounding areas (see Johnston 1997b: 505).

The question that must now be posed is whether unaspirated plosives were a dialectal feature of the Northumbrian variety of Old English. If so, one wonders whether they could have arisen as a result of contact with Brittonic. These questions are impossible to answer with certainty. For one thing, subphonemic features are rarely indicated in writing systems. Spaargaren (2008), however, argues that languages which rely on a voice contrast in plosives show completely different processes of assimilation from those that use an aspiration contrast. Drawing attention to the fact that in Old English voicing assimilation occurs when a voiceless

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For northern English see Lloyd (1899: 8), Klein (1914: 6–7), Ward (1929: 3) and Jones (1964: 139); for Lowland Scots see Dieth (1932: 85, 100–1), Wettstein (1942: 5, 20), Zai (1942: 20) and Wells (1982: 409).

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‘Impressionistically,’ Wells associates ‘non-aspiration particularly with the Pennine valleys north of Manchester; I knew someone from Burnley whose name was Parker [p=a:kə]’ (1982: 370). However, it is clear that the feature is more widespread in the North.

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plosive is followed by /d/ (e.g. in the preterite of class 1 weak verbs, when /i/ is syncopated after a heavy syllable, e.g. Pre-OE *slǣpide > OE slǣpte ‘he slept’), Spaargaren (2008) reasons that the glottal feature of aspiration inherent to /p, t, k/ (= [ph, th, kh]) spread to the following consonant, i.e. /d/ becomes /t/. Yet in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English as attested in the Lindisfarne Gospels, numerous exceptions to this rule occur, e.g. gegrippde ‘he gripped’, slēpde ‘he/she slept’, slēpdon ‘they slept’, genēolecde ‘he approached’.105 These exceptions to the general Old English trend have been viewed as irregular, unaccountable exceptions by Spaargaren (2008), yet they may be regular outcomes in early Northumbrian English based on the evidence of the laryngeal features that exist in traditional present-day dialects. If so, it must be determined whether the feature was an inherited trait of varieties of Pre-Old English which were brought over from the Continent (cf. Goblirsch 2005, 2009), or whether it was an innovation of Northumbrian varieties of Old English resulting, possibly, from Brittonic substratal influence.

Against the idea of Brittonic influence is the fact that especially Welsh is noted for its strong aspiration of voiceless plosives, a feature which also characterises varieties of Welsh English (Filppula et al. 2008: 208). Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that, according to one reconstruction of Late British, aspiration as a contrastive laryngeal feature was in the process of developing in the Late British period and so may not have been as prominent a feature during the period of early contact. In 4.2.2.3, I considered whether the very prominent aspiration found in Welsh was a development of West British, which never really got of the ground in South-West British, based on the fact that Breton and Cornish only attest weakly aspirated or unaspirated plosives. If so, it is possible that some northern Late British dialects also had only weakly aspirated voiceless plosives at the time of Anglo-Saxon contacts,106 and this phonetic feature may have entered certain English and Scots varieties as a substratum feature.107 It is especially

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Examples outside the Lindisfarne Gospels are rare (see Campbell 1959: 323 and Hogg 1992a: 300).

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Peter Schrijver reminds me of the devoicing of voiced obstruents by Proto-British provection, e.g. *kloko-penno- > *klogobenno- > *klopenn > B klopenn ‘skull’; *ati-daw-ino- > *adiðawino- > *etewɨn > MW etewyn ‘torch, firebrand’. Based on Spaargaren’s (2008) paper, one could hypothesise that provection would take place if the Late British system of plosives had contrastive aspiration. The matter would need to be investigated in greater detail. It is rather odd that when syncope occurs between two homorganic obstruents in Brittonic, the result is always a voiceless plosive, even if the starting point was /ðVð/.

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Note, for instance, that the strong pre- as well as post-aspirated voiceless plosive consonants of Scots of the Highlands and Islands (in contrast to the non-aspirated voiceless plosives of the Lowlands) can easily be accounted for by Gaelic substratal influence, because in Scots Gaelic fortis plosives are pre- and post-aspirated too: ‘In the Gaelic-influenced speech of the Highlands and Islands [...] strong aspiration is the rule; and in this accent, indeed, not only are initial voiceless plosives in a stressed syllable post-aspirated, but final ones are pre-aspirated, so that we

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striking that non-aspiration occurs precisely in areas where considerable Scandinavian influence is posited, the result thus being exactly the opposite of what one would expect, since Scandinavian languages are generally noted for their strong aspiration, more so than even Received Pronunciation and standard German.108