Abstract
Vowels in stressed syllables in the West Germanic languages-e.g. Middle English, Middle Dutch and Middle High German-were lengthened under certain circumstances. There have been two different explanations for this change. The traditional assumption is that a process of open syllable lengthening (OSL) was introduced to standardize the quantity of stressed syllables (Prokosch 1939, among others). The second, quite different, approach assumes that the lengthening process (at least in Middle English) is not OSL but some sort of compensatory lengthening caused by the loss of a final schwa (Minkova 1982, 1985, Lass 1985, Hayes 1989, Kim 1993). We attempt to show that OSL was part of the grammar of all three languages, but that the motivation depended on the local contexts. We claim that all three languages endeavored to maintain and maximize the Germanic foot (Dresher & Lahiri 1991), and OSL contributed in different ways to do so.
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