This article reconstructs the archaic Germanic rhotic by examining a natural class pattern common to Gothic and Old High German (OHG). Specifically, I argue that the sounds represented by the graphemes and patterned as [high] segments. Due to the Obligatory Contour Principle, those [high] consonants triggered dissimilatory lowering of high vowels in Gothic. On account of the No-Crossing Constraint, the same (i.e. etymologically related) consonants blocked the OHG process known as Primary Umlaut. That is, and inhibited the height features of [i] and [j] from spreading regressively onto a preceding low vowel. These novel analyses not only offer insight into patterns which have been poorly understood for the better part of two centuries, but also add clarity to our understanding of the phonological and phonetic properties of Early Germanic rhotics.
It is generally claimed that all coda consonants in Latin are moraic and therefore contribute to the weight of a syllable. Contrary to that characterisation, however, I argue that word‐final [s] was always extrametrical – as were all consonants after long vowels. That claim accounts for a number of phonological patterns that are poorly understood. Those patterns range from vowel length alternations in words like sūs ‘swine.nom.sg’ and suis ‘swine.gen.sg’ to underapplied rhotacism in words like opus ‘work’, which resists the analogical shift from [s] to [r] that is found in words like honour (< honōs) ‘honour.nom.sg’. In addition, extrametricality clarifies the idiosyncratic behaviour of word‐final [s] in Old Latin verse, in which the final syllable of a word like minus ‘less’ scans as light more often than it scans as heavy. Extrametrical consonants furthermore exhibit anomalous phonotactic patterns. For example, only word‐final [s] can create a coda with rising sonority. The resulting optimality theoretic analysis advances a detailed account of moraicity in Latin phonology and more generally informs our understanding of complex patterns in moraic structure that fall out from constraint interaction.
Old High German (OHG) differs from many other languages in that [w] does not stand in complementary distribution with [u], but rather it exhibits alternations with [o]. For example, the [o] in adjectives like gël[o] ‘yellow.nom.sg’ alternates with [w] in corresponding inflected forms (e.g. gël[w]es ‘yellow.gen.sg’). Based on extant data, we make three claims about OHG [w]. First, we use several analytical lenses – from phonotactics and etymology to sound patterning and feature composition – to argue that /w/ was an underlying consonant. This is surprising from the point of view of phonology since glides like [w] are usually assumed to be allophones of vowels. Second, we propose that OHG /w/ had the same height features as mid vowels. This accounts for the fact that /w/ neutralizes to [o] (and not [u]) in word-final position and also derives independent support from other OHG processes (namely primary umlaut). Finally, we show how the OHG data intersect with literature on the typology of glides and fail to fit naturally within that typology. Our findings place OHG glides into a seemingly unique category, the analysis of which not only broadens our understanding of OHG phonology, but also typological possibilities involved with derived and underlying glides.
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