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Scribal Practice: Some Assumptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Robert P. Stockwell  and
C. Westbrook Barritt
Robert P. Stockwell
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
C. Westbrook Barritt
Affiliation:
Washington and Lee University
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Extract

In a recent article in Language, Charles F. Hockett has presented an analysis of the stressed syllabics of the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns. Hockett opposes the traditional view which interprets ea, eo, io, and ie as short diphthongs, and offers a solution of his own which within the limitations of one MS is in part convincing. In general, he equates each vowel letter or digraph with a phoneme. In agreement with us, with Mossé, and with Daunt, but in contradiction of the established tradition, he regards the digraphs ea, eo, io, and ie as spellings for monophthongs; he believes, however, that these short digraphs represent separate short vowel phonemes; we believe that in early OE they represented allophones of the front vowels /i/, /e/, and /æ/; we believe that eo, io, and ie represented allophones only in the earlier period. These allophones later became phonemes, whereas the allophone represented by ea did not. Hockett's speculations about the motivations of the scribes who first selected these particular digraphs in these particular values are appealing. Especially ingenious is his theory about the origin of the letter y in OE, which he considers to have been originally a digraph (591–4).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 37 , Issue 1: January-March , March 1961 , pp. 75 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Charles F. Hockett, The stressed syllabics of Old English, Lg. 35.575–97 (1959).

2 Cottonian MS Vespasian A.1, published under the direction of Henry Sweet, Oldest English texts 183–420 (London, 1885).

3 Stockwell and Barritt, Some Old English graphemic-phonemic correspondences (SIL, Occasional papers, No. 4; 1951), hereafter referred to as OP 4; The Old English short digraphs: Some considerations, Lg. 31.372–89 (1955).

4 Hockett, A course in modern linguistics 375 (New York, 1958).

5 Stockwell and Barritt, OP 4.34–55.

6 For this information and for the information on Tamil and Nahuatl we are indebted to William Bright.

7 Kenneth L. Pike, Phonemics: A technique for reducing languages to writing 225 (Ann Arbor, 1947).

8 See Murray Fowler, The segmental phonemes of Sanskritized Tamil, Lg. 30.362–3 (1954).

9 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 177 (Oxford, 1950).

10 See Stenton 177–90; P. H. Blair, An introduction to Anglo-Saxon England 311–29 (Cambridge, 1956). Stenton discusses in considerable detail the influence of Ireland and of the Continent on English letters, and mentions the ‘half uncial’ script (178–9) as being of Irish origin. This script was still in use—along with the Continental style—until the 10th century. We offer this as merely one detail showing the power of tradition: even after the troubles of the 9th century, which destroyed most of the ancient Irish culture in England, this form of writing was maintained.

11 Lg. 30.1–42 (1954).

12 See Stockwell, The ME ‘long close’ and ‘long open’ vowels, Texas studies in literature and language 4.530–8 (1961).