Northern fronting and the north Lincolnshire merger of the reflexes of ME /u:/ and ME /o:/

Abstract

This paper addresses the matter of Northern Fronting of eME /o:/ in Lincolnshire, giving the medieval spelling evidence and the residual modern phonological evidence for this development in parts of the county. It considers the merger of ME /u:/ and /o:/ at /u:/ in modern north Lincolnshire and argues that this situation, which seems to invalidate Lass’s ‘no collapse’ constraint on the development of the high vowels in the Vowel Shift, is indeed, as Luick claimed, the result of lexical diffusion. But the diffusion is here shown to be, not of undiphthongised ME /u:/ from areas north of the Humber, as Luick suggested, but of vowel-shifted /u:/ from ME /o:/ from those areas south of Lincolnshire, and possibly from central and eastern areas of the county, in which Northern Fronting of /o:/ had not occurred.