A structural approach to short diphthongs

Abstract

This study presents a potential solution to a long-standing question of the phonological representation of short diphthongs. Their mere existence in Old English, the West-Saxon dialect, in particular, has been a matter of great controversy among historical phonologists and beyond. Some attention has been paid to short diphthongs attested in Icelandic by structuralists and phoneticians. Additionally, glide emergence, where a short vowel is expected, seems to take place in the present-day Sursilvan dialect of the Romansh language. What these languages have in common is that diphthongs occur in specific contexts, namely, they are allowed before consonants that are marked by what might be defined as secondary articulation. In this paper, in order to account for the occurrence of short diphthongs in these contexts, I adopt a structural model of phonological representations whereby glide emergence is the result of the interplay between a weak, empty-headed onset and the preceding nucleus.