Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 11:05:46 -0400

From: "David Bergdahl (614) 593-2783" BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: Re: waft and SAE



Isn't the relevant 'rule' governing WAFT that /a/ words after initial /w/ were

not fronted to or merged with /ae/? We have WATCH, WAD, WAFFLE, WAN, WASH &c,

with rounding in some words with /Vr/ WAR, WART, WARM. My W7C gives both

meanings for WAFF (n.) as chiefly Scottish. Could it be that WAFT is more

popular a word amongs Scots, Scots-Irish and Appalachians and only a literary

word in the north of the U.S.?



W7C gives waughten as the ME etymon for WAFT with the shift of gh

phonetically [x] to [f] similar to LAUGH, ROUGH &c. Onions gives a

pronunciation with an open o {backwards c}, which would be the natural

development of the ME form with au . This corrects my initial statement above:

the reason WAFT did not front to [ae] is that it had a differnt origin.

______________________________________________________

David Bergdahl BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Associate Professor of English Language and Literature

Ohio University / Athens fax: (614) 593-2818

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