QUANTITY ADJUSTMENT by Nikolaus Ritt ( 9780521462327 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

QUANTITY ADJUSTMENT
VOWEL LENGTHENING AND SHORTENING IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH

By:

Nikolaus Ritt

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£67.00

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£58.63

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12.5% off

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£8.37

ISBN 10:

0521462320

ISBN 13:

9780521462327

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Publisher:

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

8 December, 1994

Series:

Cambridge Studies in Linguistics Supplementary volume

Pages:

218

Description:

This book presents a unified account of all quantity changes affecting stressed vowels in early Middle English.

Synopsis:

This is a unified account of all quantity changes affecting English stressed vowels during the early Middle English period. Dr Ritt discusses homorganic lengthening, open syllable lengthening, trisyllabic shortening, and shortening before consonant clusters. The study is based on a statistical analysis of Modern English reflexes of the changes. The complete corpus of analysed data is made available to the reader in the appendices. All of the changes discussed are shown to derive from basically the same set of quasi-universal tendencies, while apparent idiosyncrasies are shown to follow from factors that are independent of the underlying tendencies themselves. The role of tendencies, i.e. probabilistic laws in the description of language change, is given thorough theoretical treatment. In his aim to account for the changes as well as trace their chronology, Dr Ritt applies principles of natural phonology, and examines the conflict between phonological and morphological 'necessities'.

Illustrations:

13 tables

Publication:

Imprint:

Cambridge University Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH AND ITS HERITAGE (PB)

QUANTITY ADJUSTMENT

QUANTITY ADJUSTMENT (PB)

RETHINKING MIDDLE ENGLISH (PB)