SURGIMIENTO DEL PROBLEMA

Old English fricatives were either voiceless or voiced, depending on their phonetic environment. Basically, fricatives were voiced between voiced sounds, except when at some morpheme boundaries (for details see 5.2.4).124 These rules also applied to Old Frisian (see Bremmer 2009: 49–50), and continue almost unchanged in Modern West Frisian. In English, however, voiced fricatives became phonemes in their own right at a very early stage indeed. And while it is difficult to gauge precisely when this process of phonemicisation arose – due to the fact that Old English orthography does not signal the contrast125 – there are at least some clues to suggest it may have arisen even in Old English. For example, Fulk (2001) claims that a phonemic distinction between /s/ and /z/ came to exist in Old English, on the basis of forms such as cærse (< *cræsse) ‘watercress’, hyrse (< *hruss(i)j-) ‘mare’ and Horsa (< *hrossa = a personal name), which show simplification of -ss- following r-metathesis but, apparently, no subsequent voicing of s in accordance with the rule that voiceless fricative are voiced between voiced sounds (cf. 5.2.4).126 Similarly, Late West Saxon blosm ‘blossom’ (< blostm) shows syncope of /t/ but no subsequent voicing of /s/ according to the voicing rule either. Since such a phonemic distinction between voiceless and voiced fricatives is more established in English than in other Germanic languages, and at such an early date, several explanations have been proposed to account for the discrepancy. In the next few paragraphs, I shall survey various explanations for early phonemicisation of the voicing contrast, before turning my attention to the question of Brittonic influence.

124

Naturally, voicing of initial fricatives in southerly Old English dialects is an additional consideration here (see 6.2.2.2).

125 _{In Old English, the fricatives appear as 〈f, þ/ð, s〉 regardless of whether they are voiceless or} voiced. Note that 〈þ〉 and 〈ð〉 were used interchangeably and were not employed in such a way as to signal a voiclessness or voicedness. Even in Modern English, 〈th〉 indicates a voiceless and a voiced interdental fricative, while 〈s〉 can also denote both a voiceless and a voiced sibilant. 126

Fulk (2001: 61–2) concedes that the modern pronunciation of Horsa (i.e. with a voiceless sibilant) could be bookish. He notes, however, that voiceless sibilants are also found in place- names containing the Old English elements Horsa, cærs and gærs, and these, in his view, demonstrate retention of [s], e.g. Horsington (Lincolnshire) < OE Horsing + tūn ‘farmstead associated with a man named Horsa’; Cassington (Oxfordshire) and Carsington (Derbyshire) < OE *cærsen + tūn ‘farmstead where cress grows’; Garsden or Garsdon, (Wiltshire) and Garsington (Oxfordshire) < OE *gærsen + dūn ‘grassy hill’.

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Following suggestions by Jespersen (1928, 1933a, 1937), many scholars hold French responsible for the phonemicisation of a contrast of voice in fricatives. According to this thesis, the distinction of voice in French was quickly understood by English speakers, who were very perceptive to the contrast, rarely encountering any problems when adopting French loans with either voiceless or voiced fricatives. Most significantly, French introduced a contrast of voice in initial position. Northern and most Midlands dialects adopted French loans with initial voiced fricatives into their phonemic system, e.g. vine (< Old French vi(g)ne ‘vine’), while southern dialects, with their voiced initial fricatives (cf. 6.2.2.2), introduced initial voiceless fricatives, e.g. fine (< Old French fin ‘settlement, payment’). However, numerous cases of voicing of initial voiceless fricatives from French loans were found in modern dialects until quite recently, suggesting that such voicing was even more widespread in Middle and Early Modern English. Britton, in a discussion of Nielsen’s 1994 paper, offers the following remarks about this discrepancy (discussion in Nielsen 1994: 56):

In the South you have this tendency for French words with initial [f] to be anglicised to fit the phonotactic rules of English by becoming voiced. So you get [varmər] ultimately out of [farmər]. But this did not happen in all the items. Whereas, seemingly outside the South, French loanwords with initial <v> never appear to have been devoiced to fit in with the pattern word-initially.127

While, as Britton notes, the southern voicing of initial voiceless fricatives in French loans can simply be viewed as phonotactic alignment, it is curious that speakers of Northern and Midlands dialects did not devoice voiced fricatives to fit their native consonantal distribution too; after all, this is what happens when French, Dutch or English words with initial voiced fricatives are borrowed into Modern Frisian (see Visser 1997: 49–50). Apparently, at the time of borrowing, the voice contrast was better established in Northern and Midlands dialects of English than in the South.

A second explanation for the phonemicisation of the voicing contrast was set out by Trnka (1934–35, 1936, 1938). Trnka accepted that French loanwords were borrowed into Middle English with contrasting voiced and voiceless fricatives, but thought that such loans remained marked non-native members of a voice correlation. He contended that the voice contrast was ‘felt as a characteristic feature of foreign words and both z and v continued to be secondary variants of the phonemes s and f in the phonological structure of Middle English’ (1936: 62). According to Trnka, the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables ultimately phonemicised voiced fricatives in Middle English. Apocope brought voiced fricatives into final position, and rather than these becoming voiceless in accordance with the phonotactics of Old English, voice was retained because English speakers took a dislike to homonymy, e.g. leaf : leave, sooth :

127

See also Wakelin (1988: 636) for more examples of voicing of initial voiceless fricatives from French loans.

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soothe, rice : rise etc. (Trnka 1936: 63).128 Trnka concluded that phonemicisation of voiced fricatives proceeded from north to south, following loss of final -e in early Northumbrian Middle English and its later apocope in central and southern dialects, such as in London at the turn of the fifteenth century (1934–35[1982]: 213). Only then, according to Trnka, were French loans which contained contrasting voiced and voiceless fricatives assimilated to the native stock.

A third explanation for the phonemicisation of the voice contrast in fricatives – usually attributed to Kurath (1956) – is the argument that simplification of intervocalic geminate fricatives, which remained voiceless, brought about a phonemic distinction of voice in fricatives in medial positions.129 Consequently, contrasting voiced and voiceless singleton fricatives arose in intervocalic position. However, there are several problems with this analysis. As Sledd pointed out already in 1958, the long voiceless fricatives occurred only after short vowels, while, after lengthening of short vowels in open syllables, the voiced fricatives occurred only after long vowels. Since the distribution of voiceless and voiced fricatives can be predicted according to their alternate phonetic environments, it is doubtful whether this explanation could accurately be described as phonemicisation.

Finally, it has been argued that the three explanations for the phonemicisation of the voicing contrast outlined above need not be mutually exclusive. For instance, Lass (1992: 57–61; 2006: 62) thinks that all three factors contributed to the characteristically stable voicing contrast of English fricatives in initial, medial and final positions of words. Thus, a voice contrast was established in initial position through French loanwords, in medial position by degemination, and in final position as a result of apocope of unstressed vowels. In spite of this, it would be fair to say that French influence is usually considered the earliest and most decisive phonemicising factor among scholars. Even Trnka acknowledged that French loans were generally adopted without reversion to the Old English voicing rules set out at the outset to this section. Other scholars have criticised the degemination theory, such as Nielsen, who concluded that ‘the influx of French loanwords into Middle English played a much greater role than anticipated by Kurath’, such that ‘the phonemic opposition between voiceless and voiced fricatives could simply have been imported along with the numerous loans’ (1994: 24–5). Indeed, the notion that French gave rise to the voicing contrast in English fricatives is now so well established that it is sometimes given as an illustrative example of phonological borrowing in books on language contact (see Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 124, 308, Thomason 2001: 79, Winford 2003: 54).

Elsewhere (cf. Laker 2009a), I have reasoned that language contact and subsequent language shift of native Brittonic speaking populations would provide a straightforward explanation for the phonemicisation of the allophonic alternation of voiceless vs. voiced fricative at a very early stage in the development of English. Since it is agreed that [f, θ, s, v, ð] were all

128

This is not to deny that there were local tendencies to devoice fricatives in line with the existing phonotactic system, and a few words preserve such devoicing in Modern English, e.g. sheriff (< Old English scīrġerēfa). See Dietz (1997: 482–4) for further examples and discussion. 129

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phonemes in Late British, just as in Old Welsh, Middle Welsh and today in Modern Welsh, Britons learning early Old English would interpret the allophonic voiced fricative variants of early Old English as phonemes, thus imposing a phonemic split on English, at least in their own varieties of the language. The development suggested here is well known from situations of second language acquisition. Weinreich (1953: 18–19) refers to this kind of external phonemicisation as ‘over-differentiation of phonemes’ and lists it as one of four basic types of possible phonological/phonetic interference to be expected in situations of second language acquisition and language shift. In Weinreich’s own words, the process ‘involves the imposition of phonemic distinctions from the primary system on the sounds of the secondary system, where they are not required’ (1953: 18). A recent description of overdifferentiation is found in Major (2001: 32):

The L1 has distinctions that the L2 does not. Although this does not usually cause nonnative pronunciation, it results in a different mental representation from that of the NS [native speaker, SL] (see Zampini 1994). English /d/ and /ð/ are separate phonemes whereas in Spanish they are allophones (/d/ → [ð] after vowels). An English speaker thinks of the [d] in dia “day” as a different sound from the [ð] in nada “nothing,” whereas the Spanish speaker thinks of them as the same sound, because they are allophones of the same phoneme. The reasons for these psycholinguistic differences are that allophones are usually not at the level of consciousness of a NS, but phonemes are.

Thus, the same type of acquisition process which takes place when English native speakers learn Spanish would have applied when speakers of Late British (and later Old British dialects such as Old Welsh) learned early Old English as a foreign language: the voiced fricative allophones of early Old English had the status of phonemes in Late British130 and so would have been understood as such during the acquisition process. The distribution of the fricatives /f, θ, s, v, ð/ in Late British and Middle Welsh is outlined in Table 13131 (note that in Late British, as well as in later Medieval Welsh, fricatives contrast for voice initially, medially and finally).

130 _{Late British */v, ð, ɣ/ originate following lenition of Proto-Celtic */b, d, g/ in sonorous} environments 4.2.2). British */s/ always existed as a reflex of unlenited Proto-Celtic */s/. */f, θ, x/ arose variously (see Schrijver 1995: 460–1), and very early from /s/ + consonant clusters (see Table 3, section 4.2.3, and especially Schrijver 1995: 374–458). By apocope these medial fricatives could also come into final position. Voiceless fricatives also derive from spirantisation (see 4.2.4). Initial /θ/ arose via initial spirantisation, which is posited for Late British, as it is attested in Cornish, Breton and Welsh (4.2.4). */f, s/ also entered Late British in numerous Latin loans during the Roman period.

131

The forms and reconstructions given here are largely taken from Schrijver (1995). The orthography of Middle Welsh (in contrast to Modern Welsh) is ambiguous; importantly, the graphemes represent the phonemic value of fricatives as given in the Late British reconstructions.

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Position Fric. Late British (< Proto-Celtic, Latin) Middle Welsh Initial /f/ *fer (< PCl. *sɸeret-s) fer ‘ankle’

/θ/ *a θeɣw (< PCl. *ak tegwo-) a thew ‘and fat’ /s/ *ser (< PCl. *ster-) ser ‘stars’

/v/ *eið vux (< PCl. *esjo bukkos) y fwch ‘his buck’ /ð/ *eið ðadl (< PCl. *esjo datlā) y dadyl ‘his meeting’

/z/ N/A N/A

Medial /f/ *difer (< PCl. *dī-eks-ber-) differ- ‘defend’

/θ/ *nerθið (< PCl. *nertesi) nerthy ‘you will strengthen’ /s/ *wosarn- (< PCl. *wostarnati) gosarn- ‘litter’

/v/ *ɔver (< PCl. *au-beros) ofer ‘vain’ /ð/ *bɵðar (< PCl. *budaros) byddar ‘deaf’

/z/ N/A N/A

Final /f/ *korf (< L *corpus) corf ‘body’ /θ/ *niθ (< PCl. *nisdo-) nyth ‘nest’ /s/ *is (< PCl. *esti) ys ‘is’ /v/ *duv (< PCl. *dubus) du ‘black’ /ð/ *blēð (< PCl. *bleidā) blwydd ‘year’

/z/ N/A N/A

Table 13. Voiceless and voiced fricative phonemes in Late British and Middle Welsh

One argument which can be raised against the proposal of Brittonic influence is that there are no grounds for assuming that Late British had a voiced sibilant [z], either phonetically or phonemically (see Table 13), such that phonemicisation of the Old English variants [s(:)] vs. [z], which only co-occurred in medial positions, cannot be directly explained by this analysis. Rather, one would expect to find some evidence for substitution of [z] with [s]. There is indeed some evidence that the /s/ vs. /z/ contrast is the least stable in Modern English. Varieties of Northern English and Scots show a particular tendency for Standard English [z] to be realised as [s] (see Jones 1997: 324);132 but /s/ and /z/ are rarely differentiated in the orthography at earlier periods except initially, hence it is difficult to gain much historical insight into this matter.

Importantly, it is known from more recent contact situations that if a phonetic feature is already utilised in a language contrastively, then it can be more readily transferred to other speech segments too. Illustration of this point is provided by the language shift of Irish to (Irish) Initial /θ/ is formed by spirantisation. Initial /v/ and /ð/ are derived from initial lenition (3.2.2). Although spirantisation and soft mutation are triggered by preceding words, e.g., a(k) ‘and’ or y ‘his’ (see Table 13), phonemic status of /θ/, /v/ and /ð/ is assumed due to the fact that these are independent phonemes in medial and final positions.

132

Kay, drawing particular attention to Scots and northern English dialects, also notes in the appended discussion to Nielsen’s article (1994: 57): ‘[s z] particularly is unstable.’

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English, which took place mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In brief, speakers of Irish had a larger consonantal inventory than English, and often found equivalents or near- equivalents for Modern English consonants from their native Irish language, yet Irish possessed neither the voiced alveolar /z/ nor the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/. Nevertheless, these voiced sibilants were generally acquired by Irish speakers on account of the fact that a voicing contrast was already well established for other fricatives in Irish, such that speakers effectively learned to voice native /s, ʃ/ in line with other fricatives. As Bliss (1984: 137) explains: ‘No sounds corresponding to English /z, ʒ/ existed in Irish, but since these are merely the voiced equivalents of /s, ʃ/ they were easily articulated’. Thus, the lack of a voiced sibilant /z/ in Late British and Medieval Welsh need not constitute as significant a problem as might first be presumed, given that voice was well established as a distinctive feature within the Late British consonantal system.

In conclusion, early phonemicisation of a voice contrast in fricatives through early language shift offers several advantages over previous accounts. First, it can provide an explanation for early indications of phonemicisation even in Old English (Fulk 2001, 2002). Secondly, preservation of voice in final consonants after apocope of unstressed syllables probably has little to do with avoidance of homonyms, pace Trnka (1936: 63). More likely, phonemicisation of voice was already instituted before apocope occurred, e.g. bathe /beɪð/, house /haʊz/ (< Old English baþian, hūsian) vs. bath /bɑːθ/, house /haʊs/ (< Old English bæþ, hūs). In fact, there has been a tendency for English speakers to extend this contrastive feature analogically by creating new verbal forms from nouns, e.g. E mouth and grease, i.e. pronounced /maʊθ/ and /griːs/ as nouns, but /maʊð/ and /griːz/ as verbs (see OED s.vv. for the derivation of these forms).133 Such a productive extension of the voice contrast in fricatives to morphology demonstrates how crucial the voice distinction in fricatives became in English, unlike its closest relatives Frisian, Dutch and German. Thirdly, phonemicisation of allophonic contrasts – especially at so rapid a rate and across all dialects – is more likely to occur as a result of language shift than through lexical borrowing and diffusion. Early phonemicisation due to Brittonic language shift accounts for why the English were so adept at adopting French voiceless and voiced fricatives in loanwords without any large scale sound substitution. The introduction of numerous French loanwords enhanced the number of voice oppositions in English, notably in the highly salient initial position, but the phonemic contrast of voice in fricatives was clearly in place long before any large scale French borrowing.