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. This may be considered an extreme form of fusion (Crowley 1997:46), or possibly arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count.
An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless velar fricative /x/ and its palatal allophone were lost from the language. For example, in Chaucer's time the word night was phonemically /nɪxt/; later the /x/ was lost, but the /ɪ/ was lengthened (and thus changed in quality; see English phonology to /iː/ to compensate. (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 historical post-vocalic */r/: in Scottish English, girl has a short /ɪ/ 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".
Read more about Compensatory Lengthening: Greek
Famous quotes containing the word lengthening:
“We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters’ lengthening flight. When they need us, we are fiercely there. But we do not need them to need us—or to become us.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)