Garry W. Davis

Segment Organization in the High German Consonant Shift

In consequence of the familiar High German consonant shift, the voiceless stops /p t k/ became the affricates /pf ts kx/, simplifying later to the geminate fricatives /ff ss (‘ƷƷ’) xx/ in certain environments. It has long been assumed that the affricates developed only from aspirated allophones of /p t k/, thus accounting for the retention of plain stops in /s/-clusters and a few other positions, but it is not obvious why particularly aspiration, ensuing from a laryngeal gesture of spread glottis, should have resulted in the oral property of affrication. Neither is it clear how etymologically simplex segments, upon deaffrication in certain environments, might have resulted in geminates without further stipulation. Proceeding from essentially traditional assumptions, and at the same time addressing important questions about Germanic phonetics raised by Vennemann (1984), the present paper attributes the triggering of the affrication event to an early factoring out, or segmentalization, of the feature for aspiration, i.e., pre-OHG [p h t h k h ] → [ph th kh]. Explanations are then proposed for the development of affricates out of these now disegmental sequences via place assimilation from the stops, and of the affricates into geminate fricatives (postvocalically and in some postconsonantal environments) via assimilatory weakening.

ANALOGIE, INTRINSISCHE DAUER UND PROSODIE : Zur postvokalischen Ausbreitung der althochdeutschen Lautverschiebung im Fränkischen

An analysis of dialect words from throughout the Rhineland presented here supports the view that the OHG shift began after short vowels and spread to consonants after long vowels only secondarily. Furthermore, pre-OHG *-p, *-t, *-k shifted less consistently after long vowels in Rhenish Frankish varieties than they did in other dialects of Old High German. To explain this difference we posit (following Schmidt, Die sprachhistorische Genese der mittelfränkischen Tonakzente: 201–233, 2002 and Schmidt/Künzel, Das Rätsel löst sich: 135–163, 2006) that tone accents in the pre-OHG Rhenish Frankish varieties were originally derivative of the intrinsic (phonetic) variation in length found among long vowels. Intrinsically longer [–high] long vowels had a long, falling tone accent that emphasized their length, and that delayed or blocked the shift of postvocalic *p, *t, *k (> f/ff, s/ss, x/xx) in that environment.