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On the alleged existence of a vowel /y:/ in early Modern English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2021

FAUSTO CERCIGNANI
FAUSTO CERCIGNANI*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere Università degli Studi di Milano Via Carlo Ravizza 14 I–20149 Milan Italy fausto.cercignani@unimi.it
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Abstract

Many scholars have held that in late Middle English, in the London dialects from which Standard English grew there existed a vowel /y:/ developed from various native sources and/or used as a substitute for Old French or Anglo-Norman /y/. The aim of this article is to accurately review the relevant evidence adduced by E. J. Dobson and other scholars in favour of a variation between early Modern English /y:/ and /iu/ with a view to offering conclusions based on a direct presentation of the original sources. It will be shown that even the early writers on orthography and pronunciation who correctly describe a sound [y] (as they knew it from French, Scottish and Northern English, as well as from other languages) cannot be adduced as evidence for the existence of a vowel /y:/ in early Modern English.

Keywords

vowel /y:/early Modern Englishhistorical phonology
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 263 - 277
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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