Voiced or voiceless? Old english <f> In Middle English <fd> Sequences

Abstract

AbstractThe Old English past system for the verb habban have, has past tense (pt) hæfde, hefde and past participle (ppl) hæfd, hefd (late West‐Saxon also hæfed (Campbell 1959: §762)). Many early Middle English texts show a reflex set that does not reflect the handbook consensus on the voicing of fricatives between voiced segments. In certain text languages in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) corpus of tagged texts (CTT), the ppl of the verb have is hVued, while the pt is hVfde. The reflex of OE <f> in these words is spelled <u> intervocalically and <f> before <d>. This orthographic distinction seems to be systematic and is illustrated also by the reflexes of OE hēafod head (LAEME heued, bihefdet), hlǣfdige lady (lefdi, lauedy), wēofod altar (ƿeofdes, ƿeouedes (pl), the past systems of (be)lǣfan leave (leafde, leuede), (be)lefan believe (lefde, ileuet) and (be)rēafian (be)reave (reafde, reuede).By this stage in the history of English, voiceless and voiced fricatives could appear contrastively in initial position. This opened the way for <f> and <u/v> to contrast medially, which happened increasingly systematically. Our main research question therefore is: does <fd> in early Middle English texts represent [vd] as normally supposed, or could it represent [fd]?From LAEME CTT we have retrieved the forms of all words that potentially show non‐initial labial fricative plus voiced consonant: i.e. reflexes of OE non‐initial <fd>, <fn>, <fr>, <fl>. The results indicate that the different consonants provoke non‐arbitrary differential use of <u> or <f>. Frequency of occurrence of voicing is tied to the sonority of the following consonant in the pattern: voiced stops > nasals > liquids (order: lateral > rhotics). Voicing is most resisted where sonority is lowest, with [d] the most resistant followed by [n], [l] and [r] in that order. Our concluding hypothesis is that at least a subset of reflexes of OE <fd>, were at least variably pronounced [fd]. Such a pronunciation existed variably alongside [vd] and more commonly [ved], from voicing of [f] in voiced surroundings and addition of unhistorical [e]. Similarly, at least a subset of reflexes of OE non‐initial <fn>, <fr>, <fl> also were at least variably pronounced with [f] and what we find in the texts are representations of what was current in speech.Then since that I have neuer swarfdeLet not my paines be ondeseruid(Sir Thomas Wyatt (1502–1542): London British Library, Egerton 2711, poem 41)