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2. The southern Scandinavian quantity shift
2.1. Consonant shortening (CVC:V>CVCV)
next sectionThe second step in the development of Scandinavian quantity is consonant shortening, which is characteristic of Danish (as, e.g. in Danish falde, finde, drikke, fatte, lappe, bygge). This development is absent in Icelandic, Norwegian, Faeroese, Swedish and in several High German varieties which still adhere to the isochronic principle and in which the opposition CV:C vs. CVC: is still relevant. Consonant shortening is, however, characteristic of the West Germanic languages, both of the standard varieties and most of the dialects.
As the Danish consonant shortening has not become manifest in spelling, there is a great divergence among diachronists in the dating of this process. Skautrup assumes that the development vilde /vil:ә/ > /vilә/ took place in the early fourteenth century (Skautrup 1944: 254); Rasmussen places it within the sixteenth century (Rasmussen 1972).
At first glance, it may seem that the shortening of long consonants has led to a re-establishment of the prosodic type short vowel + short consonant, that was characteristic of the Old Germanic languages (cf. Danish malle /male/, vilde /vile/ - Old Icelandic tala /tala/, vika /vika/), i.e. to a restoration of the phonological relevance of vowel quantity, since it is possible again to have short and long vowels in one and the same position (e.g. preceding a short consonant; cf. Arnason 1980: 79). If, however, we take into consideration the syllable structure, we see that the Old Scandinavian (and Old Germanic) CVCV-structures differ considerably from the modern Danish (and modern West Germanic) ones:
|
r o o t | |||||
|
mora |
mora |
Mora | |||
|
onset |
nucleus |
coda |
onset |
vowel | |
|
Mod. Danish |
f |
a |
l |
- |
ə (falde) |
|
Old Icelandic |
v |
a |
- |
l |
a (gen. pl. of valr) |
The most important consequence of consonant shortening was that the Old Germanic syllable structure without coda, which used to be characteristic of short syllabic words (CV-CV), was not re-established in the course of this development; instead, the root syllable remained bimoraic. The consonant shortening has led to the disappearance of the extrametrical element. If we consider the geminate shortening CVC-CV>CVC-V (as in German Falle /fal:ә / > Falle /falә/) with regard to the relation between syllable and morpheme boundaries, we see that consonant shortening leads to the disappearance of the morpheme-closing and syllable initial unit. A new type of syllable has emerged which violates the naturalness of the open syllable in the sequence CVCV, but which is very productive in the Germanic languages. Schematically, this development can be demonstrated in the following way:
|
r o o t | |||||
|
mora |
mora |
mora | |||
|
onset |
nucleus |
coda |
onset |
vowel | |
|
f |
a |
l |
l |
ә |
(falde) |
|
f |
e |
n |
n |
ә |
(finde) |
become
|
r o o t | |||||
|
mora |
mora |
mora | |||
|
onset |
nucleus |
coda |
onset |
vowel | |
|
f |
a |
l |
- |
ә |
(falde) |
|
f |
e |
n |
- |
ә |
(finde) |
The syllable boundary is here the same as after a short vowel in isochrony, i.e. the syllable boundary does not precede the postvocalic consonant. In contrast to isochrony, however, there is no extrametrical unit, i.e. there is no consonant in the syllable onset. Martinet regarded both Swedish falla and German Falle as isochrony (Martinet 1955). But although the foot structure is identical in both cases (VC), there is an important difference, namely an extrametrical (syllable-initial) unit in Swedish falla which is absent in Danish and the West Germanic languages.
These developments in Danish and in the West Germanic languages do not constitute a syntagmatic change, but a paradigmatic one which has led to the emergence of a previously unknown syllable structure.
In modern publications, the consonant in Danish falde, finde or German Falle, bitte is usually referred to as ambisyllabic (Wiese 1996: 36), which is supposed to mean that it simultaneously closes the root syllable and constitutes the onset of the following syllable. If, however, we compare the languages with consonant shortening to those which lack this development, but which contain real ambisyllabic consonants (as, for example, Swedish or Middle Bavarian CVC-CV), or with the ambisyllabic consonants which in the West Germanic languages and in Danish mark morpheme boundaries (as in English unnatural, German Schifffahrt, Danish bundne), this assumption hardly seems to be helpful. If the postvocalic consonants in the structure CVCV are interpreted as ambisyllabic in the West Germanic languages, their syllable structure is equated with the syllable structure of the Scandinavian languages (cf. Lorentz 1996: 113), an interpretation that does not take into account the difference between the postvocalic consonants in Swedish falla /fal:a/ and those in Danish falde /falә/.
In the Danish and West Germanic contact (syllable-cut) correlation, the vowel is not separated from the following consonant if it is short (i.e., in words of CVCV structure), while this is the case in words of the same structure in Old High German and the (in this respect) more conservative modern Scandinavian and High German varieties. Therefore, the postvocalic consonant clearly belongs to the coda in Danish and the West Germanic languages. Thus, the root syllable remains bimoraic as in Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faeroese, but in contrast to these the syllable initial consonant is absent (Swedish /fal-la/ vs. German /falә/). All bisyllabic words are trimoraic in contact correlation; bisyllabic words of the structure CVCV in the Old Germanic languages and in the more conservative modern Germanic varieties are bimoraic. The trimoraic structure of CVCV-words with contact correlation also becomes manifest in apocope. In the West Germanic languages and in Danish (i.e. in the languages with contact correlation), there is no distinction in the treatment of words of the structures CVCV and CV:CV, as both types are trimoraic. The third mora disappears simultaneously in apocope. In contrast, the second syllable in the originally short syllabic (i.e. bimoraic) words remains unchanged in archaic Scandinavian dialects and in the old West Germanic languages (cf. Scandinavian dialect trimoraic /`falla/ becomes /^fall/, bimoraic tala retains the final vowel, cf. also Old English feall but sunu).
2.2 Vowel shortening
Consonant shortening is part of a process whose complimentary component is vowel shortening. In both cases, we encounter in the result a structure with coinciding syllable and morpheme boundaries in which the consonant is placed in coda position. Vowel shortening is characteristic of several southern Swedish and Danish varieties as well as for the Danish standard norm, cf. the development /vI:ta/ > /vIta/ in south-eastern Skåne in contrast to Swedish veta (Areskoug 1957: 250):
Southern Swedish
|
r o o t | ||||
|
mora |
mora | |||
|
onset |
nucleus |
coda |
onset |
vowel |
|
v |
I |
I |
t |
a |
|
becomes | ||||
|
v |
I |
t |
Ø |
a |
This vowel shortening, which leads to a coincidence of syllable and morpheme boundaries, is a very productive process which is carried out very consistently, especially before certain consonants. In Danish, these are j, w, ð,γ more rarely l, n and s. This shortening affects genuinely long vowels (cf. Old Danish skogh /sko:gh/ Standard Danish (StD) skov /skou’/, Samsø (Sms) /skow/ – /skow’i/ skoven;Old Danish thiuf /þiu:f/ Sms /tyw’/, StD tyv /ty’v/~/tyw’/,Old Danishhvit /hwi:t/, ut /u:t/, klut /klu:t/, Zealand variety /við’/, /uð’/, /kluð’/; Sms /uj’/, /hwij’/, /kluj’/ ; StD /vi’ð/~/við’/; /u’ð/~/uð’; /klu’ð/~/kluð’/; Sms /kniw’/ Old Danish knif /kni:f/, StD /kni’v/~/kniu‘/) as well as those vowels that had been lengthened in the course of the Middle Germanic quantity shift (cf. especially the vowel shortening in Danish varieties: Sms /gał‘/ (et), StD /ga’l/; Sms /gran(’)/, StD /gran/; Sms. /graw/-/graw’en/, StD /gra’v/ ; StD /lou/ (lo’ven), Sms /low/ – /low’en/ (<*loghu pl. of lagh); StD vej /vai’/ /vai’en/ Sms /wej, wej’i/ (Old Icelandic vegr).
Traditionally, it has been assumed that the originally short syllabic monosyllabic words in Danish maintain their original quantity (as e.g. glad /glað/ oder tal /tal/) and that only few words of CVC structure have received a secondary lengthening in analogy to the bisyllabic words (as e.g. skib, gul, sag) (Skautrup 1944: 236). However, the recent tendency towards the development CV:C>CVC in the Danish standard variety, and an even stronger one in the dialects, the vowel lengthening in the East Danish varieties, as well as the spelling of such words with two vowel letters in Danish manuscripts show that the hypothesis of general vowel lengthening in words like tal, glad (cf. Jakobsen 1910: 42-44; Hansen 1962: 333-388), now almost forgotten, was correct. In those Danish dialects that were to become the basis of the standard variety, the vowel in words like tal and glad was first lengthened (as in the other Scandinavian languages). In the next step, they underwent the same development as the above-mentioned long-syllabic words. The vowel was shortened; the consonant, however, did not become extrametrical, but was shifted into coda position. The vowel shortening in the South-Western Swedish varieties (like vI:ta > vIta, see above) and in the Danish varieties (cf. Old Danish spellings taal and øøl, as well as StD /tal/, /øl/) show that this development was indeed possible. But if the vowel was lengthened in these words, why do they not have stød? (All genuine CV:C words have stød in Danish.) The development in Danish dialects shows that the stød can disappear in these words. It is extremely instable in monosyllabic words (cf. Samsö /gran’ ~ gran/). We can assume that the monosyllabic forms, like tal and øl, used to have stød even in Copenhagen, but later lost it. In bisyllabic forms, however, the stød plays an important role for syllabification (Kuz’menko 1991: 124) and is therefore retained in forms like tal-et and øl-et. The fact that vowel shortening and stossumsprung (a shift of the stød, as in brev /bre’v/ > /breu’/ and stød /stø’ð/ > /støð’/) were realised in words with originally short vowels (as in tal (tal>ta:l>tal; öl>ö:l>öl) has been explained by Areskoug as being due to the specific quality of these vowels (cf. Areskoug 1957: 217, 698). But the development in Danish dialects shows that even originally long vowels undergo the same development (s. a.).
Vowel shortening in combination with a change of the syllabic structure, including stossumsprung, is a very productive process in the Danish standard variety (Brink, Lund 1975: 221; Kusmenko 1992, see also the bibliography there). Both the consonant shortening in the structure CVC: and the vowel shortening in the structure CV:C result in the consonant no longer being in the onset. This kind of vowel shortening is also characteristic of the West Germanic languages, especially of English (Hackmann 1908).
In all of these cases we find developments that have resulted in the same syllable structure, which has emerged as a consequence of consonant shortening with close contact (or, in other words, with a consonantal coda but without an extrametrical element). Close contact seems to be very productive in the Germanic languages. The shortening of consonants and vowels bears witness to the tendency towards a coincidence of syllable and morpheme boundaries, which is characteristic of the development of the Germanic languages.
The next step in the development of the Germanic consonants – consonant lengthening in apocope – is part of the further development of this tendency.