Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T10:59:34.465Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Celtic influence on Old English vowels: a review of the phonological and phonetic evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2018

STEPHEN LAKER*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japanlaker@flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Abstract

Debate continues over what was spoken in Britain before, during and after it was settled by the Anglo-Saxons in the middle of the first millennium ad. Schrijver (2009) argues that phonological and phonetic developments in Old English provide vital clues. Accordingly, Old English changed in different ways from other Germanic languages due to contact with an early British Celtic variety that resembled Old Irish. Aspects of this proposal have been greeted with a degree of interest and approval by linguists but have escaped detailed review. This article argues instead that the Old English developments are closely aligned to those found in other Germanic languages. It also includes novel research results which explain the variation in late Northumbrian Old English <eo> and <ea> spellings on (morpho)phonological grounds, showing that this alternation too provides no evidence for Celtic influence.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

In this article, angled brackets (<>) enclose orthographic sequences; slant brackets (//) enclose phonemes, and square brackets ([]), phonetic transcriptions. ‘C’ denotes any consonant, and ‘V’, any vowel. In phonemic and phonetic transcriptions, short monomoraic diphthongs are indicated by a breve (̆) on the first element. When citing other people's work, their conventions are respected. I am grateful to Rolf Bremmer, Patrick Honeybone, Angelika Lutz, Robert Mailhammer, John Phillips, Toshiya Tanaka, Michiel de Vaan, Gaby Waxenberger and especially two anonymous referees for helpful feedback on this article. Further comments and corrections were generously provided by Peter Schrijver, who has different views on several points made in section 3 (but not section 4) of this article. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15K16774.

References

Ahlqvist, Anders. 2010. Early English and Celtic. The Australian Celtic Journal 9, 4373.Google Scholar
Anderson, Cormac. 2016. Consonant colour and vocalism in the history of Irish. PhD dissertation, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.Google Scholar
Ball, C. J. E. & Stiles, Patrick. 1983. The derivation of Old English geolu ‘yellow’ and the relative chronology of smoothing and back-mutation. Anglia 191, 528.Google Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred. 2003. The Harford Farm Brooch runic inscription. Neophilologus 87, 133–5.Google Scholar
Benediktsson, Hreinn, 1982. Nordic umlaut and breaking: Thirty years of research (1951–1980). Nordic Journal of Linguistics 5 (1), 160.Google Scholar
Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr 2009. An introduction to Old Frisian: History, grammar, reader, glossary. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Britton, G. C. 1961. Aldrediana IV: The - and i-diphthongs. English and Germanic Studies 7, 119.Google Scholar
Buccini, Anthony. 1995. Ontstaan en vroegste ontwikkeling van het Nederlandse taallandschap. Taal en tongval 8, 866.Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1977. Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Coates, Richard. 1984. On an early date for Old English i-mutation. In Crépin, André (ed.), Linguistic and stylistic studies in medieval English, 2537. Paris: Association des médiévistes anglicistes de l'enseignement supérieur (publication 10).Google Scholar
Cunliffe, Barry. 2013. Britain begins. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Daunt, Marjorie. 1939. Old English sound-changes reconsidered in relation to scribal tradition and practice. Transactions of the Philological Society 38 (1), 108–37.Google Scholar
Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (DOEC), ed. Healey, Antonette diPaolo, with Wilkin, John Price & Xiang, Xin. Toronto: Toronto University Press. http://doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html (accessed 1 Feb 2016).Google Scholar
Dietz, Klaus. 2011. Sprachkontakt im Lichte der altenglischen Toponymie: Das frühe lateinische Lehngut. In Haubrichs, Wolfgang & Tiefenbach, Heinrich (eds.), Interferenz-Onomastik: Namen in Grenz- und Begegnungsräumen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 259300. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücken Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte und Volkserforschung.Google Scholar
Durrell, Martin. 1989. Umlaut in Old High German and after. In Flood, John L. & Yeandle, David N. (eds.), Mit regulu bithuungan. Neue Arbeiten zur althochdeutschen Poesie und Sprache, 219–32. Göppingen: Kümmerle.Google Scholar
Gerrard, James. 2013. The ruin of Roman Britain: An archaeological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Greene, David. 1962. The colouring of consonants in Old Irish. In Sovijärvi, Antti & Aalto, Pentti (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 622–4. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Grønvik, Ottar. 1998. Untersuchungen zur älteren nordischen und germanischen Sprachgeschichte. Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
Gütter, Adolf. 2011. Frühe Belege für den Umlaut von ahd. /u/, /ō/ und /ū/. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 133 (1), 113.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. 1992. A grammar of Old English, vol. 1: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. & Fulk, Robert D.. 2011. A grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Holbrook, Neil & Morton, Richard. 2008. Assessing the research potential of grey literature in the study of Roman England. Archaeology Data Service. Available at: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit_eh_2008/index.cfm (accessed 1 Feb 2016).Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2015. New perspectives in historical linguistics. In Bowern, Claire & Evans, Bethwyn (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 64102. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kostakis, Andrew. 2015. Height, frontness and the special status of /x/, /r/ and /l/ in Germanic language history. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1992. Front rounded vowels in Old English. In Colman, Fran (ed.), Evidence for Old English: Material and theoretical bases for reconstruction, 88116. Edinburgh: Donaldson.Google Scholar
Liberman, Anatoly. 2007. Palatalized and velarized consonants in English against their Germanic background, with special reference to i-umlaut. In Cain, Christopher M. & Russom, Geoffrey (eds.), Studies in the history of the English language III. Managing chaos: Strategies for identifying change in English, 536. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lindelöf, Uno L. 1890. Die Sprache des Rituals von Durham. Ein Beitrag zum altenglischen Grammatik. Helsinki: Frenckell.Google Scholar
Lindelöf, Uno L. 1901. Die südnorthumbrische Mundart des 10. Jahrhunderts. Bonn: Hanstein.Google Scholar
Lindelöf, Uno L. 1923. A new collation of the gloss of the Durham Ritual. The Modern Language Review 18 (3), 273–80.Google Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1914–40. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Reprint 1964. Stuttgart and Oxford: Bernhard Tauchnitz/Blackwell.Google Scholar
McCone, Kim. 1996. Towards a relative chronology of ancient and medieval Celtic sound change. Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, St Patrick's College.Google Scholar
McCone, Kim. 2015. Unstressed vowels and consonant quality in Old Irish: u or non-u? In Breatnach, Liam, hUiginn, Ruairí Ó, McManus, Damian & Simms, Katherine (eds.), Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Celtic Studies Maynooth 2011, 109–35. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Millar, Robert McColl. 2012. English historical sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Millar, Robert McColl. 2015. Review of Ringe & Taylor 2014. LinguistList 26. 3042. http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3042.html (1 Feb 2016).Google Scholar
Miller, D. Gary. 2012. External influences on English: From its beginnings to the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2011. Phonemically contrastive fricatives in Old English? English Language and Linguistics 15 (1), 3159.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2013. A historical phonology of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Nespor, Marina, Shukla, Mohinish & Mehler, Jacques. 2011. Stress-timed vs syllable-timed languages. In van Oostendorp, Marc, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, 1147–59. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Hans F. 1984. A note on the origin of Old English breaking and back mutation. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 22, 7381.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Hans F. 1985. Old English and the continental Germanic languages, 2nd edn. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Hans F. 2000. The early runic language of Scandinavia: Studies in Germanic dialect geography. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Hans F. 2015. The vowel systems of Old English, Old Norse and Old High German compared. In Askedal, John Ole & Nielsen, Hans Frede (eds.), Early Germanic languages in contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27), 261–76. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Nübling, Damaris. 2013. Zwischen Konservierung, Eliminierung und Funktionalisierung: Der Umlaut in den germanischen Sprachen. In Fleischer, Jürg & Simon, Horst J. (eds.), Sprachwandelvergleich – Comparing diachronies, 1542. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ó Maolalaigh, Roibeard. 1997. The historical short vowel phonology of Gaelic. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Patrick P. 2009. The Irish role in the origins of the Old English alphabet: A re-assessment. In Graham-Campbell, James & Ryan, Michael (eds.), Anglo-Saxon/Irish relations before the Vikings (Proceedings of the British Academy 157), 322. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, David N. 2011. Sabrina in the thorns: Place-names as evidence for British and Latin in Roman Britain. Transactions of the Philological Society 109 (2), 113–37.Google Scholar
Ralph, Bo. 2002. Phonological and graphematic developments from Ancient Nordic to Old Nordic. In Bandle, Oskar et al. (eds.), The Nordic languages: An international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages, vol. 1, 703–19. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ringe, Don & Taylor, Anne. 2014. A linguistic history of English, vol. II: The development of Old English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, A. S. C. 1937. Studies in the accidence of the Lindisfarne Gospels (Leeds School of English Language Texts and Monographs 11). Kendal: Wilson.Google Scholar
Sandøy, Helge. 2005. The typological development of the Nordic languages I: Phonology. In Bandle, Oskar et al. (eds.), The Nordic languages: An international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages, vol. 2, 1852–71. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2009. Celtic influence on Old English: Phonological and phonetic evidence. English Language and Linguistics 13 (2), 193211.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2011. Old British. In Ternes, Elmar (ed.), Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From Medieval British to Modern Breton, 184. Bremen: Hempen.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2014. Language contact and the origins of Germanic languages. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2015a. Pruners and trainers of the Celtic family tree: The rise and development of Celtic in the light of language contact. In Breatnach, Liam, hUiginn, Ruairí Ó, McManus, Damian & Simms, Katherine (eds.), Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Celtic Studies Maynooth 2011, 191219. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 2015b. Recognizing prehistoric sound change caused by language contact: The rise of Irish (c. 100–600 ad). Handout from the workshop ‘Managing multilingualism: Contact, attitudes and planning in historical contexts’ at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Leiden University, 2–5 September 2015.Google Scholar
Schulte, Michael. 1998. Grundfragen der Umlautphonemisierung: Eine strukturelle Analyse der nordgermanischen i/j-umlauts unter Berücksichtigung der älteren Runeninschriften. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Stolz, Walther. 1908. Der Vokalismus der betonten Silben in der altnordhumbrischen Interlinearversion der Lindisfarner Evangelien. Bonn: Hanstein.Google Scholar
Twaddell, W. Freeman. 1938. A note on Old High German umlaut. Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur 30, 177–81.Google Scholar
Versloot, Arjen. 2014. The Runic Frisian vowel system: The earliest history of Frisian and Proto-Insular North Frisian. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 72, 3562.Google Scholar
Waxenberger, Gaby. 2013. The reflection of Pre-Old English sound changes in Pre-Old English runic inscriptions. In Sauer, Hans & Waxenberger, Gaby (eds.), Recording English, researching English, transforming English, 1764. Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
White, David L. 2015. Old English without short diphthongs: The outlines of a new interpretation. Anglica 24 (2), 525.Google Scholar