Re: Drifting phonemes [was: Re: The AmE 'o' sound]

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 11/16/04 

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:32:31 +0100

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:42:03 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> Common Slavic had two nasal vowels *e~ and *o~. When the
>> first writing systems were developed for Slavic (Glagolitic,
>> later Cyrillic), these nasal vowel still existed, and were
>> given separate symbols:
>> _
>> /_\
>> / | \ = e~
>>
>> ___
>> \ /
>> /|\ = o~
>>
>> (the Cyrillic for *e~ developed into Russian <ja>, mirrored
>> R).
>
>Really? Cubberley says (in WWS; the Routledge Slavonic book is still in
>a box somewhere): Peter the Great's "civil script" (1708-10) "made a
>start on deleting redundant letters and shapes which were marked as
>'Church' variants (o, ja <ia lig.>, e˜, ps); confirmed (by omission) the
>earlier abandonment of some (u <oy>, o˜); fixed in place some earlier
>shape changes (u <y>, SC, y <bI>); and introduced some new forms (è, ja
>[rev. R])."
>
>Graphically, the new ja seems closer to the old ja than to e˜.

The old ja (i+a ligature), like the je (i+e) ligature, was
never really popular in Russia. The Novogorodian birch-bark
documents usually write /ja/ with the "small yus" (i.e.
<e~>), whether the /ja/ is etymologically */e~/ or */ja/.
The je~ (> /ja/) and jo~ (> /ju/) ligatures were also hardly
used. The only common ligature was the i+o (for i+ou) /ju/.

I've always seen Modern Russian <ja> (reversed R) considered
an alternation of the shape of <e~>, cf. for instance
http://getup.ru/dir/33/1.shtml, where it says:

JA, poslednjaja, tridcat' tret'ja bukva russkogo alfavita;
vosxodit k jusu malomu <e~>...

[JA, last, 33rd. letter of the Russian alphabet; goes back
to "small jus" <e~>]

So the text should read:

"... deleting redundant letters and shapes which were marked
as 'Church' variants (ô [omega], ja [ia lig.], ps);
confirmed (by omission) the earlier abandonment of some (/u/
= <oy>, <o~>); fixed in place some earlier shape changes
(/u/ = <y>, s^c^ [making it more like <c> and less like what
it was: a ligature of s^and t], /y/ = <bI> [used to be "hard
sign"+i], /ja/ = "reversed ja" [simplified from malyj jus]);
and introduced one new form (è [reversed e]) ... "

I disagree that, graphically. the new ja seems closer to the
old ja than to e~, but I can't argue that very well in
e-mail. Consider deleting one (merging two) of the legs:

   _ _
  /_\ /_\
 / | \ => | \

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl