The roles of phonology and analogy In Old English high vowel deletion

Abstract

AbstractThe problem under consideration is the exact nature of the application of High Vowel Deletion (HVD) in Old English. As discussed in §1, according to what has come to be the most prevalent view, a form such as nom.acc.pl. hēafdu‘heads’ in Late West Saxon, from earlier *hēafudu, is the phonologically regular result of the application of HVD. In §2 a recent alternative explanation is discussed, whereby *hēafudu should have produced *hēafd, which was subsequently reformed to hēafdu in West Saxon on the basis of analogy. Some initial difficulties that confront this latter explanation are discussed. The earlier analysis of Eduard Sievers maintains that neither of these analyses is correct, and that hēafudu, one of the forms actually attested in early texts, including the Vespasian Psalter, represents the purely phonological result of HVD, which applies vacuously to this form. Evidence is adduced in §3 demonstrating that the treatment of the phonological results of HVD in interrelated declensional categories in the dialect of the Vespasian Psalter are preserved with impressive conservatism, evincing little or no analogical disruption. This conclusion lends strong support to Sievers’ analysis of forms like hēafudu and renders it extremely improbable that West Saxon hēafdu can be anything but an analogical creation or that the proposed *hēafd could ever have existed. In §4 a rationale is offered for the changes, analogical or otherwise, that must be assumed for West Saxon in forms like hēafdu, as well as in ja‐stem neuter nouns with plurals like rīċu, wītu, along with feminine nouns in Germanic *‐iþō, such as and .