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2.1. Consonant shortening (CVC:V>CVCV)
The 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).