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Celtic influence on Old English vowels: a review of the phonological and phonetic evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2018

STEPHEN LAKER
STEPHEN LAKER*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, [email protected]
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Abstract

Debate continues over what was spoken in Britain before, during and after it was settled by the Anglo-Saxons in the middle of the first millennium ad. Schrijver (2009) argues that phonological and phonetic developments in Old English provide vital clues. Accordingly, Old English changed in different ways from other Germanic languages due to contact with an early British Celtic variety that resembled Old Irish. Aspects of this proposal have been greeted with a degree of interest and approval by linguists but have escaped detailed review. This article argues instead that the Old English developments are closely aligned to those found in other Germanic languages. It also includes novel research results which explain the variation in late Northumbrian Old English <eo> and <ea> spellings on (morpho)phonological grounds, showing that this alternation too provides no evidence for Celtic influence.

Keywords

Old EnglishOld Irishbreakingi-umlautback umlaut
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 591 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

In this article, angled brackets (<>) enclose orthographic sequences; slant brackets (//) enclose phonemes, and square brackets ([]), phonetic transcriptions. ‘C’ denotes any consonant, and ‘V’, any vowel. In phonemic and phonetic transcriptions, short monomoraic diphthongs are indicated by a breve (̆) on the first element. When citing other people's work, their conventions are respected. I am grateful to Rolf Bremmer, Patrick Honeybone, Angelika Lutz, Robert Mailhammer, John Phillips, Toshiya Tanaka, Michiel de Vaan, Gaby Waxenberger and especially two anonymous referees for helpful feedback on this article. Further comments and corrections were generously provided by Peter Schrijver, who has different views on several points made in section 3 (but not section 4) of this article. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15K16774.

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