Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250. Part 2: Notes
General
Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250. Part 2: Notes
English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500
#Phonology:# Orm supplemented the current graphic methods by devices of
his own. Thus he systematically doubled a consonant after a short vowel
in a closed syllable, so tunnderrstanndenn 109. Whether he meant thereby
to indicate shortness of the vowel or length of the consonant is
disputed. The latter view seems the more probable; the difficulty which
is presented by the occurrence of the doubled consonant in unstressed
syllables, where it is short in ordinary speech, is removed if, with
Björkman, we suppose that the phonetist isolated his syllables in
testing their value. Where the consonant after an open syllable is in
fact short, Orm often places a breve over the preceding short vowel, as
wĭtenn 3, tăkenn 40, wăke 76, 82, 105, hĕte 87, hĕre 123, but fails at
times, as in sune 20, wake 56, here 114, 143. Likewise he uses very
seldom an almost horizontal accent to indicate vowel length, as á 174,
but more frequently, as if to emphasize his warning against possible
error, doubles it, as le̋t, fe̋t 10, ha̋t 37, űt 53, &c., or even for
greater insistence trebles it, as clū̋t 2, ȝē̋t 39, mostly before final
t. Here, too, he is not systematic, thus time 115 has a single mark of
length twenty times elsewhere, and words like ut have sometimes two,
sometimes three accents.
Furthermore, Orm invented a special symbol [g] with a flat top
projecting on both sides for the guttural stop g, reserving the
continental g for the dzh sound in such words as egge (edge), leggen,
seggen: the latter occurs in this extract only in gluternesse 167, and
that by mistake. In his representation of late OE. #eo#, #ēo#, the
author hesitated between eo and e, preferring the former at the
beginning, but gradually increasing the use of the latter, so that it
becomes normal in the last third of the work and invariable in the
Dedication and Preface, which were, no doubt, written last of all. He
then appears to have aimed at uniformity by scraping out, not always
effectually, the o wherever he had written eo, which was restored in
many instances (but apparently not in this extract) by a later scribe in
a fainter ink and thinner letter. Holt, by printing eo wherever it once
existed, fails to represent the actual state of the manuscript: in this
extract o is still visible, though partly erased, in heore 56,
heoffness, leome 57, þeossterrnesse 65, deofless 67, heoffness, leome
70, heoffness 77, mildheorrtnesse 78, heoffness 107, 113, deofless 126;
everywhere else it is completely erased. Finally, heffness 174 is so
written without erasure in a line added lengthwise on the margin,
perhaps from the following leaf, which is now missing and may have been
withdrawn by the author. It is generally held that Orm employed eo and e
to represent the same sound, the former being a traditional spelling.
This is unlikely on the part of a determined phonetician like Orm, who
would naturally be impatient of traditional spellings. Much more
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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