[Spellyans] redistribution of <i> and <y>
Jon Mills
j.mills at email.com
Thu Jul 24 11:49:04 BST 2008
The variation that Lhuyd notes is typical of variation found in all
languages at all periods. In my idiolect of English, for example, I
sometimes say [i:k at nQmIks] and I sometimes say [Ek at nQmIks]. It would be
naive to think that Middle Cornish has no variation: dialectal,
idiolectal or free. Given that variation of one sort or another would
have existed throughout out all periods of Cornish and given that the
match of traditional spellings to phonology is inexact, we cannot be
precise about the phonology of any historical period. I am not suggesting
that the method that I demostrated in my previous post can be applied to
all words that contain unstressed syllables. Not all such words are
attested with additional affixes, for example. And those that are
attested with additional affixes may for one reason or another produce
ambiguous results. I maintain, however, that my method holds good for the
examples that I gave.
Regarding the examples you gave, consider the following attestations. In
the Ordinalia we also find 'newethow' and in Jordan we find 'nowethis',
'nowethys'; so no need to spell this word 'nowoth'. In the Ordinalia we
also find 'bannethow'; so no need to spell this word 'nowoth'. In PA we
find 'molloz' and 'molozek'; so perhaps it would not be wrong to write
'molloth'. Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: "nicholas williams"
To: "Standard Cornish discussion list"
Subject: Re: [Spellyans] redistribution of and
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:39:04 +0100
I take your point, Jon, but by the Late Cornish period I am not so
sure of the status of schwa.Look at AB 248b where Lhuyd speaks of the
ending of the verbal adjective:
He says "I am sensible that the Modern Pronuncitation of the Cornish
does notconform to the the Termination of this Participle's being
always in yz: For they generallyend it in ez, Saying Kreiez, Called;
Trehez, Cut; Miskemerez, Mistaken, Dylîez, Revenged,Guerhez, Sold,
&c. and sometimes in az: As Ledhaz, Slain; Kyrtaz, Delayed; Guesgaz,
Worn;tho' not seldom, also in yz: As Devydhyz, Quenched; Devedhyz,
Come, Bidhyz, Drowned;Kelmyz, Bound; Huedhyz, Swoln."
If I understand him, Lhuyd seems to be saying that the historic -ys
is either [Ez], [Iz] or [aZ]and it does not seem possible to see why
one is used rather than one of the others.Since the -ek ending in
Late Cornish is either -ak or -ok, it would seem that reduced -ek canacquire
u-colouring.
There are problems with you suggested spellings. The form <nowothow>
is attested seven times. The pluralof bedneth, baneth is <bannothow>
and of molleth <mollothow>. Are you thereforesuggesting that we write
*<nowoth>, *<bednoth> and *<mollothow>?
Nicholas
On 24 Jul 2008, at 09:54, Jon Mills wrote:
I agree that Cornish has three reduced vowels: schwa, i-schwa and
u-schwa. This is an areal feature that Cornish shares with
English. These are allophones of various other vowels. They are
not allophones of the same vowel. When an affix is added to a
word, the stress shifts to the new penultimate syllable and the
syllable containing the previously unstressed schwa becomes
stressed. This allows us to identify the phoneme of which the
schwa in question is an allophone. In order to simplify, in the
following examples, I have written all reduced vowels as [@].
[lag at s] > Ordinalia: 'lagasow'; BM: 'lagasek'; Jordan:
'lagasowe'; Kerew: 'lagagow'. Schwa is an allophone of /a/. We
should write 'lagas'.
[ben at n] > PA: 'benenas'; Ordinalia: 'benenes', 'venenes',
'vynynes'; BM: 'benenes'. Schwa is an allophone of /e/. We should
write 'benen'.
[gorhem at n] > PA: 'woromynnys'; BM: 'gorhemynnes'. Schwa is an
allophone of /I/. We should write 'gorhemmyn'.
[gal at s] > Ordinalia: 'gallogek', 'gallosek', 'galosek' ; BM:
'galosek', 'gallosek'. Schwa is an allophone of /o/. We should
write 'gallos'.
[prof at s] > PA: 'brofusy'; Ordinalia: 'profugy'. Schwa is an
allophone of /u/. We should write 'profus'.
Thus we see that the reduced vowels are allophones of /a/, /e/,
/I/, /o/ and /u/. Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: "nicholas williams"
To: "Standard Cornish discussion list"
Subject: Re: [Spellyans] redistribution of and
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:12:25 +0100
I have discussed the question of schwa to some degree in
Cornish Today.It seems that in MC there were three unstressed
vowels: schwa, i-coloured schwaand u-coloured schwa (in
gallus and arluth, for example). In LC all three had a
tendency to fall together. One finds Cornowok in 1572and
Frenkock in NBoson.
Flehes x 14, flehys x 42, and flehas x 11 are all attested
in Middle Cornish, whichseems to me to indicate that schwa
and i-schwa are allophones, perhaps conditionedby the
following consonant or by vocalic harmony.
The word for 'one' is onen x 12, onan x 52, onon x 9 and onyn
x 90 in Middle Cornish.
In Late Cornish the verbal adjective in -ys is not
infrequently spelt with <as>, <az>:e.g. En Termen ez passiez
thera Trigaz en St. Levan JCH § 1.
Moreover in Middle Cornish itself benegas 'blessed' and
malegas 'accursed' are common (x 60 and 10 respectively).
In Late Cornish forms like crenjah and venjah seem to suggest
that schwa in auslaut hada low allophone close to [a].
We write arlùth with <ù> in KS but in Late Cornish it appears
as <arleth> 54 times! And as <arlith> 10 times.Nicholas Boson
writes <arlyth> once.
The word profus 'prophet' is exclusively Middle Cornish,
since it is replaced by profet in Tregear and LC. The
attested spellings are: <profus> 13, <profes> 1, <profys> 1,
<profos> 3.
<eglos> occurs 22 times in MC and LC, <egglos> 197 times
(mostly in Tregear who had a special interest in the church).<egles>
occurs twice in Late Cornish and <eglez> three times.
<egglys> occurs once in Sacrament an Alter.
The word cafus, cafos is written <cafes> twice in Origo
Mundi.
The collapse of unstressed vowels into schwa is by the way an
indication that the prosodic shift has occurred by the timeof
the earliest MC texts i(late fourteenth and early fifteenth
centuries). The specification of the SWF allows fora
pre-shift phonology with half-length and pure unstressed
vowels. This again is an attempt to salvage the underlying
phonology of KK.It is inauthentic as well as being
irrelevant, since nobody uses it.
Any attempt, however, to distinguish unstressed -en, -es from
-yn, -ys is, I think, doomed to failure.We have schwa,
i-schwa and u-schwa (if I may be allowed to use the terms)
and that is all.And all three are by the Late Cornish period
(if not before) allophones of the same phoneme.
Nicholas----------
On 23 Jul 2008, at 14:18, Craig Weatherhill wrote:
I would support Nicholas's view here. The place name
Langostentyn is
Langustentyn, Langustenstyn and Legostentyn in the C14.
A final -in
creeps in in 1447, followed by -en (1501) and -on (1574
twice) and -n
again in 1574. The saint's name is S. Constantinus (pure
Latin) in
1086, 1284, 1287, 1291; then Costentyne 1468, Costentyn
1441. Only in
the C16 does -in appear (note the lack of "saint" in
these examples).
For Constantine Bay, we have only two Cornish examples:
Egloscontantyne
c1525, and Constenton 1568.
Please note, too, that there is a place-name element
<kegyn>, "ridge"
(Pengegon), cognate with W. cegin. To avoid confusion, I
would
recommend that "kitchen" is represented by <kegen>.
On the subject of <au> I find that I have to revise my
advice to Jon.
Nance gives chons, chonsya where I would expect to find
chauns, chaunsya
(chaunssya?). It looks as though most of the <au> words
are loan words,
although they extend to Celtic personal (saint's) names
such as Maunan,
Maugan and Maudet.
Craig
nicholas williams wrote:
In unstressed syllables there is no difference in
pronunciation
between, say, -in in kegyn and -yn in brentyn. Even
KK (which spells
"etymologically") admits that unstressed i and y are
not to be
distinguished. Moreover the texts always spell MC
<brentyn>,
<bryntyn>. There are no exx of *<brentin>. The name
for "Constantine"
is common in BM, where it is spelt <Costentyn> at
least 20 times. It
never has final <-in>. The only time the name has
<in> is in the Latin
form <Constantinus> in stage directions. To attempt
to distinguish
kegyn from *brentin, *Costentin in spelling is not
wise. It will make
learning the orthography much harder and with no
phonetic gain. It
will merely look like an attempt to salvage a feature
of KK, which was
misguided in the first place. The SWF should write
kegyn, Costentyn,
brentyn, melyn, gyllyn, etc.
Notice incidentally, that following KK the SWF at the
moment writes
gyllyn, gyllys, gyllyns but gylli!
Nicholas
-----------
On 23 Jul 2008, at 08:40, Daniel Prohaska wrote:
*I would like to hear everyone’s opinions on the
following idea for
redistributing <y> and <i> in the SWF. I would
write <i> where bother
Late and Middle Cornish have /i/ and /i:/, and
write <y> ~ <e> (in
dictionaries <ÿ> ~ <ë>) where Middle Cornish has
/I/ and /I:/, but
Late Cornish has /e/ and /e:/.*
* *
*Examples:*
*SWF <brentin>; RMC /”brentin/, RLC /”brentin/;*
*SWF <kegyn>; RMC /”kegin/, RLC /”keg at n/;*
*SWF <tir>; RMC /ti:r/, RLC /ti:r/;*
*SWF <bys> ~ <bes>; RMC */bI:z/ = [bi:z] ~ [bIz]
~ [beIz] etc., RLC
/be:z/;*
* *
*Dan*
* *
* *
*-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Everson
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:31 PM*
At 21:46 +0100 2008-07-20, Craig Weatherhill
wrote:
Good question - if <y> is a short i and <i> a
long one, then this makes
no sense at all.
“That is the SWF (and KS) rule for monosyllables.
In KS we are making
an attempt to rationalize (and make teachable)
the distribution of
<i> and <y>.
Nicholas and I tried many times to have this
distribution dealt with
during the AHG meetings when we were asked our
advice. Our concerns
were not addressed. Not even acknowledged.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com”
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Dr. Jon Mills,
School of European Culture and Languages,
University of Kent
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