Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English

This 2003 study uses evidence from early English verse to determine when certain sound changes took place.

Donka Minkova (Author)

9780521573177, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 March 2003

422 pages, 2 b/w illus. 4 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.79 kg

' … the book may be seen by some as a tour de force through historical English phonotactics, and in view of the complexity of solutions offered the reaction of many a reader may be occasional frustration - about how difficult it is to answer questions that many of us have long thought to be settled.' Anglia

This 2003 study uses evidence from early English verse to reconstruct the course of some central phonological changes in the history of the language. It builds on the premise that alliteration reflects faithfully the acoustic identity and similarity of stressed syllable onsets. Individual chapters cover the history of the velars, the structure and history of vowel-initial syllable onsets, the behaviour of onset clusters, and the chronology and motivation of cluster reduction (gn-, kn-, hr-, hl-, hn-, hw-, wr-, wl-). Examination of the patterns of group alliteration in Old and Middle English reveals a hierarchy of cluster-internal cohesiveness which leads to new conclusions regarding the causes for the special treatment of sp-, st-, sk- in alliteration. The analysis draws on phonetically based Optimality-Theoretic models. The book presents valuable information about the medieval poetic canon and elucidates the relationship between orality and literacy in the evolution of English verse.

List of figures
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Preface
1. Social and linguistic setting of alliterative verse in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval England
2. Linguistic structures in English alliterative verse
3. Segmental histories: velar palatalization
4. Syllable structure
5. ONSET and cluster alliteration in Old English: the case of sp-, st-, sk-
6. ONSET and cluster alliteration in Middle English
7. Verse evidence for cluster simplification in Middle English
References
Index of names
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Sociolinguistics [CFB]