Compensatory lengthening
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| Sound change and alternation |
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General
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Lenition (weakening)
Sonorization (voicing)
Spirantization (assibilation) Rhotacism (change of [z] or [d] to [r]) L-vocalization (change of [l] to [w]) Debuccalization (loss of place) |
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Epenthesis (addition)
Anaptyxis (vowel)
Excrescence (consonant) Prosthesis (initial) Paragoge (final) Unpacking Vowel breaking |
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Coarticulation
Palatalization (before front vowels) Velarization (before back vowels) Labialization (before rounded vowels) Initial voicing (before a vowel) Final devoicing (before silence) Metaphony (vowel harmony, umlaut) Consonant harmony |
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Cheshirisation (trace remains)
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Sandhi (boundary change)
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Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda. This may be considered an extreme form of fusion (Crowley 1997:46).
An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless palatal fricative /ç/ and its allophone [x] were lost. For example, in Chaucer's time the word night was pronounced /niçt/; later the /ç/ was lost, but the /i/ was lengthened to /iː/ to compensate. (Later the /iː/ became /aɪ/ by the Great Vowel Shift.)
Both the Germanic spirant law and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal.
Non-rhotic forms of English have a lengthened vowel before a historical post-vocalic */r/: in Scottish English, girl has a short /i/ followed by a light alveolar /r/, as presumably it did in Middle English; in Southern British English, the */r/ has dropped out of the spoken form and the vowel has become a "long schwa".
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
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