Old High German and Its Phonetic Identification

In a recent article Hans Kurath has admirably stated the importance of a ‘careful consideration of the phonic character and range of the several phonemes’ in historical linguistics, even if the phonemic point of view is also essential there. Indeed, the primary material of a historical linguist consists of the written reflexes of languages as transmitted to us, and all synchronic and diachronic analyses have to be based on them. Phonetic interpretation is feasible but the obvious impossibility of direct observation or instrumental recording seems to preclude phonetic analysis in the study of a ‘dead language’. Is then historical phonetics without scientific value and significance? This judgment would be erroneous, since, after all, we cannot conceive of phonemes without their phonetic variants or allophones, and, what is even more important, we see the origin of phonemic change in the development of such allophones. Phonemic changes are the main events in the phonological history of a language; but they cannot be explained or fully described without postulating specific phonetic values. Thus there cannot be any historical phonemics without historical phonetics. Phonetic identification of phonemes and their variants is an important task in historical linguistics, and the methods used as well as the results achieved deserve a more detailed investigation

Biology · German · Identification (biology) · Linguistics · Speech recognition · Computer Science · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic research and analysis · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology

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  Open Access•William J Barry•Journal of the International…•1997

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