The Role of /x, r, l/ in Sound Changes: OE Breaking and other Processes

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Kwon, Young-Kook. 2003. The Role of /x, r, l/ in Sound Change: OE Breaking and other Processes. English Language and Linguistics 16, 243-270. This paper investigates diphthong-related sound changes that affected the vowel system in Old and Early Middle English in the framework of Optimality Theory. Old English Breaking, Northumbrian Retraction, Anglian Smoothing and Early Middle English Coalescence are paid special attention. Past studies do not answer why these diphthong-related sound changes tend to recur before /x, r, I/ throughout the history of English. In addition, such studies analyze each change individually but do not provide a unified account that captures structural coherence among these changes. It will be shown that the combination of, on the one hand, an enhanced theory of representations reflecting temporal relations of the segments involved and, on the other hand, the Optimality Theory of grammar makes possible a unified and natural account of these sound changes. More generally, this paper lends support to OT as a framework for explaining sound change and variation.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• ABSTRACT
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The phonetic and phonological nature of OE vowels and /x,r,l/
• 3. A unified account
• 4. Conclusion
• References