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Vowel breaking

 
WordNet: breaking
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the act of breaking something
  Synonyms: breakage, break

The adjective breaking has one meaning:

Meaning #1: (of waves) curling over and crashing into surf or spray
  Participle of verb: break (meaning #20)

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Wikipedia: Vowel breaking
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Sound change and alternation
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In historical linguistics, vowel breaking (sometimes called vowel fracture[1]) is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. The change into a diphthong is also known as diphthongization.

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Breaking in Southern American English

This is characteristic of the "Southern drawl" of Southern American English, where the short front vowels have developed a glide up to [j], and then in some areas back down to schwa: pat [pæjət], pet [pɛjət], pit [pɪjət].

Breaking in Old English

Main article: Old English phonology#Breaking

Proto-Germanic stressed short i, e, æ become ie,eo, ea regularly in Old English when followed by h or by r, l + another consonant, and long "i, e, æ" become "îo, êo, êa" before "h"

Examples are:[2]

  • PG *fallan > feallan "fall"
  • PG *erþō > eorþe "earth"

Breaking in Old Norse

Proto-Germanic stressed short e becomes ja or (before u) jǫ regularly in Old Norse except after w, r, l. Examples are:

According to some scholars,[3] the diphthongisation of e is an unconditioned sound change, whereas other scholars speak about epenthesis[4] or umlaut.[5]

Breaking in Proto-Indo-European

Some scholars[6] believe that Proto Indo-European language (PIE) i, u has a kind of breaking before an original laryngeal in Greek, Armenian and Tocharian, whereas the other Indo-European languages have monophthongs. Typical examples are:

  • PIE *gʷih3wos > *gʷioHwos "alive" > Gk. ζωός, Toch. B śāw-, śāy- (but Skt. jīvá-, Lat. vīvus)
  • PIE *protih3kʷom > *protioHkʷom "front side" > Gk. πρόσωπον "face", Toch. B pratsāko "breast" (but Skt. prátīka-)
  • PIE *duh2ros > *duaHros "long" > Gk. δηρός, Arm. *twār > erkar (Skt. dūrá-, Lat. dūrus).

However, the hypothesis is not adopted by most handbooks.

References

  • Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
  1. ^ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
  2. ^ Robert B. Howell 1991. Old English breaking and its Germanic analogues (Linguistische Arbeiten, 253.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer
  3. ^ J. Svensson, Diftongering med palatalt förslag i de nordiska språken, Lund 1944.
  4. ^ H. Paul, "Zur Geschichte des germanischen Vocalismus", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Kultur 6 (1879) 16-30.
  5. ^ K. M. Nielsen, Acta Philologica Scandinavica 24 (1957) 33-45.
  6. ^ F. Normier, in: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 91 (1977) 171-218; J.S. Klein, in: Die Laryngaltheorie und die Rekonstruktion des indogermanischen Laut- und Formensystems, Heidelberg 1988, 257-279; J.E. Rasmussen, in: Selected Papers on Indo-European Linguistics, Copenhagen 1999, 442-458.

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