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The Phonetic Value of Old French Ue from Vulgar Latin Open O
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the present paper I propose to examine once more the documents that afford evidence as to the sound of the Old French diphthong commonly represented by ue, and to develop certain fresh conclusions to which this evidence seems to point.
Current views of this matter may be briefly summarized: Vulgar Latin long open o, broken (by a process concerning which scholars are far from agreed) into ǫǫ, gave uo (dissimilation), on which we disagree again: was it uó or úo? Both pronunciations may be defended; but it is simpler to suppose that, like Italian and Spanish, Old French had a rising diphthong here (ŭó) from the very first. At any rate, the next stage must have been *uø, next ue, then *uø once more and finally ø.
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References
1 It will hardly be necessary to make continual reference to Meyer-Lübke, Gram. d. rom. Sprachen, I, §§121, 185, 211, where the data and statements are brought together that have served as the point of departure for all subsequent discussion.
2 Schuchardt, Vokalismus des Vulgärlat., 1866,1, 465. Cf. my article, Rom. Rev. XX (1929), pp. 331. ff.
3 Matzke, in ZrPh XX, 1 ff., which see for bibliography; more recently, L. Bouman, in Neophilologus III, pp. 1 ff.; Salverda de Grave, ib., pp. 161 ff., offers an attractive theory that attempts to account for both lines of evidence; E. Philipon, in Rom. L, 386 ff.
4 Thomsen, in Rom. V, 74 note, interprets the uo of the Eulalia as üö, but the ninth century may be too early for this change; Meyer-Lübke, op cit., I, §211, offers u as a possible intermediate stage between u$oo and uę in Spanish; a statement involving the same sounds appears in Bourciez, Précis de phonétique fçse., 5 ed., 1921, §66, applied to the French development.
5 Bourciez, loc. cit.
6 Suchier, ZrPh II, 291.
7 Loc. cit., p. 301.
8 Thus oe may, in fact, be the earliest attempt to represent the new diphthong, and not a mere graphic variant of ue written originally to prevent misreading ve at the beginning of a word, which seems to be a common impression (e.g., Beaulieux, Hist. de l'orthographe fçse., 1927, 1, p. 67), nor originating in words like avoec. As early as the Oxford Roland, oe appears in its own right: of the 16 words assonating in open o, all are spelled oe except oilz (twice), volt, and the “false” assonance (line 315) fieus < fěud-.
9 Hildebrand, in ZrPh VIII, 359.
10 Examples and discussion in Meyer-Lübke, op cit., I, 211; Strauch, Lat. ⊖ in d. normann. Mundart, diss. Halle 1881, p. 88; Philipon, loc. cit.
11 Hildebrand, loc. cit.; the first rhyme in Eneas, ca. 1160, E. Wacker, Über das Verhältnis v. Dialekt u. Schriftsprache im Afrz., diss. Berlin 1916, p. 13.
12 Cf. Matzke, loc. cit., p. 7: “im grösseren Teil der nordfranzösischen Dialekte war aber ue schon zu ö geworden, als oi definitiv bei oe oder ue ankam,” i.e., in the thirteenth century, and later than φ j> (ö) from close o.
13 Meyer-Lübke, Hist. frz. Gram., I, §§86, 89.
14 Cf. Frl. Wacker's op. cit.
15 Cf. P. Passy, Essai sur les changements phonétiques, §232, and Menéndez-Pidal, Orígines del Español, 1926, p. 140.
16 These appear in Meyer-Lübke, op. cit., and Hist. frz. Gram. I, §§83, 85; Suchier, loc. cit., p. 290; Strauch, op. cit.; other cases can easily be added from the titles mentioned, or others referred to in them.
17 Cf. his “Die Stufe oé (< ẹ) ist für das XIII. Jahrh. durch Schreibungen (usw.) . . . . gesichert,” Hist. frz. Gram. I, §83.
18 ZrPh XI, 83 ff.
19 Bourciez, loe. cit.; Brunot, Hist. de la langue fçse, I, 153, dates φ at the end of the 12th century.
20 The stage *ṷφ was transitory in Spanish, rounded front vowels being unknown; cf. also the development of original i-umlaut of o, u in Anglo-Saxon.
21 Some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon scribes did much the same, writing oe for the i-umlaut of o: oeÐel, “country” in the Cottonian MS of King Alfred's preface to his translation of the Cura Pastoralis (Sweet, A.-S. Reader, on the first page of the selection there printed); later, the spelling was e, see Sweet's introduction, pp. xix, xxiv (4th ed., 1884). The first spelling of the German umlaut-o (much later, however) is also o+e (o).
22 Revue de philol. fçse, XX (1906), 1 ff.
23 More serious are vient (věnit): dient, etc., Tobler, Vom frz. Versbau, ed. 1910, p. 145.
24 Cf. Menger's denial (MLN, XVIII, 107) that the diphthong from open o can assonate on the continent with e from a as in Anglo-French quer: honurer).
25 ZrPh, VIII, 256.