Compensatory lengthening

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Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda. An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless palatal fricative /ç/ and its allophone /x/ were lost. For example, in Chaucer's time the word night was pronounced /niçt/; later the /ç/ was lost and the /i/ was lengthened to /iː/ by compensatory lengthening. (Later the /iː/ became /aɪ/ by the Great Vowel Shift.)

Both the Germanic spirant law and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal.

Non-rhotic forms of English have a lengthened vowel before a silent post-vocalic r: in Scottish English, girl has a short /i/ followed by a light alveolar /r/, as presumably it did in Middle English; in Southern British English, the /r/ has dropped out of the spoken form and the vowel has become a "long schwa".

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Last updated on Saturday January 12, 2008 at 03:13:25 PST (GMT -0800)
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