Compensatory lengthening

Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda. This may be considered an extreme form of fusion (Crowley 1997:46), or possibly arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count.^[1]

An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless velar fricative /x/ and its palatal allophone [ç]^[2] were lost from the language. For example, in Chaucer's time the word night was phonemically /nixt/; later the /x/ was lost, but the /i/ was lengthened to /iː/ to compensate. (Later the /iː/ became /aɪ/ by the Great Vowel Shift.)

Both the Germanic spirant law and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal.

Non-rhotic forms of English have a lengthened vowel before a historical post-vocalic */r/: in Scottish English, girl has a short /i/ followed by a light alveolar /r/, as presumably it did in Middle English; in Southern British English, the */r/ has dropped out of the spoken form and the vowel has become a "long schwa".

Compensatory lengthening is very common in Greek. It is particularly notable in forms where -ν or -ντ (-nt) comes together with an σ (s). These include the nominative singular and dative plural of many participles, adjectives, and nouns, the 3rd person plural ending for present or future active of all verbs, and the 3rd person singular present of athematic verbs. Examples are:

• *πάντ-ς → πᾶς "every, whole" (masculine nominative singular)^[3]
• *πάντ-jᾰ → *πάντ-σα → πᾶσα (feminine)
• *πάντ-σι → πᾶσι (masculine/neuter dative plural)
• compare παντ-ός (m./n. genitive singular)

• *μόντ-jᾰ → *μόντ-σα → μοῦσα "muse"

• *όντ-jᾰ → *όντ-σα → οὖσα participle "being" (feminine nominative singular)^[4]
• *οντ-ίᾱ → *ονσ-ία → οὐσία "property, essence"
• compare ὀντ-ός (m./n. genitive singular, from participle ὤν "being",)

• Doric ἄγ-ο-ντσι → *ἄγ-ονσι → Attic/Ionic ἄγουσι "they drive"

• Doric τί-θε-ντσι → *τίθε-νσι → Attic/Ionic τίθεισι "he/she places"^[5]

See also

• Mora
• Phonological history of the English language

References

• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.

1. ^ Hayes, Bruce (1989). "Compensatory Lengthening in Moraic Phonology". Linguistic Inquiry (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 20 (2): 253–306. 
2. ^ Millward, C. M. (1996). A Biography of the English Language. Boston: Wadsworth. p. 84. 
3. ^ Smyth, Greek Grammar on CCEL, p. 81, paragraph 199.
4. ^ Smyth, p. 81, paragraph 300.
5. ^ Smyth, p. 152, paragraph 462, and note.