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Bibliographic Data

ID2853218
AuthorsRobert P Stockwell, C Westbrook Barritt
Year1961
Volume37
Issue1
Pages75
Publication date1961-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/411251
OpenAlexW2332072134
LanguageEN
Citations received5

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)

Art · Contradiction · Digraph · Diphthong · Linguistics · Literature · Vowel · Wish · Computer Science · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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