historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

, Bartsch's law or the Bartsch effect (french: loi de Bartsch, or ) is the name of a

sound change A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

that took place in the early history of the

langues d'oïl The ''langues d'oïl'' (; ) are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. These belong to the larger ...

( 5th - 6th centuries AD), for example in the development of

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intel ...

Description

Bartsch's law was a phonetic change affecting the open central vowel in northern

Gallo-Romance The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the Langues d'oïl and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic, and Rhaeto-Rom ...

dialects in the 5th-6th century. This vowel, inherited from Vulgar Latin, underwent fronting and closure in

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

ed open

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...

s when preceded by a

palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...

or palatalized consonant. The result of this process in Old French was the

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

: :Latin > Old French ''laissier'' (modern French ''laisser'' "let") :Latin > Old French ''chier'' (modern French ''cher'' "dear") Note that is also the outcome of the diphthongization of in stressed, open syllables: :Latin > > > Old French ''pie'' (modern French ''pied'' "foot") The chronology of Bartsch's law relative to the more general

diphthongization In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. Types Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...

of to (responsible, for example, for the final vowels in > ''mer'' "sea" or > ''porter'' "carry") has not been conclusively established. According to one view, diphthongization took place first, and Bartsch's law is seen as a further segmentation of the diphthong caused by the preceding palatal/palatalized consonant, followed by simplification of the resulting

triphthong In phonetics, a triphthong (, ) (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthongos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel q ...

: :IPA: > > > > :Romanicist notation: á > áę > íaę > íę > íẹ According to a second view, Bartsch's law affected the simple vowel , causing it to change to , which then diphthongized to : :IPA: > > :Romanicist notation: a > ẹ > íẹ Support for the second hypothesis comes the fact that palatal consonants triggered the same change > in unstressed word-initial syllables: :Latin > > Old French ''cheval'' "horse"

Further development

Subsequent changes have obscured the effects of Bartsch's law in modern French. The accent shifted to the second element of the diphthong , and the first element underwent glide formation: :in IPA: > > :in Romanist notation: íẹ > iẹ́ > yẹ The glide was then lost in most words, either absorbed by the preceding palatal consonant, or eliminated by analogical pressure (e.g. in many verbs of the ''-er'' conjugation): :Old French ''chier'' > > modern French ''cher'' "dear" :Old French ''laissier'' > > modern French ''laisser'' or "let" The glide was only retained if subsequent

nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internation ...

took place, as in Modern French ''chien'' "dog" (not *''chen'' or ).Buckley (2000), p. 5 Consequently, the vowel "e" in these words, which is due to Bartsch's law, is now indistinguishable from the "e" that resulted from the general diphthongization of (as in the words ''mer'' "sea", ''porter'' "carry", mentioned above). The diphthong is still visible in the spelling of words like ''chien'' "dog" (< ) and ''moitié'' "half" (< Proto-Western Romance < Latin ).

Notes

References

* * *{{cite book , last= Zink , first= Gaston , title= Phonétique historique du français , year= 1999 , origyear=1986 , edition= 6th , publisher= PUF , location= Paris , isbn= 2-13-046471-8 * tp://ling.upenn.edu/facpapers/gene_buckley/gallo_roman.pdf ''The Phonetic Origin and Phonological Expansion of Gallo-Roman Palatalization'', E.Buckley, 2000 Sound laws Old French French language