English Language & Usage Asked on October 17, 2020
Why vin in vine sounds similar to vice, but vin in vineyard is similar to that in the name Vincent?
I would expect since both vine and vineyard are related to grape in some way, they probably should share the root. As a result their pronunciation should be similar. What is the history behind the difference?
Etymonline has this to say:
vineyard (n.) c.1300, replacing Old English wingeard, from vine + yard (n.1). Compare German weingarten.
If it is a compound of vine and yard there would be little reason to shorten the i of vine. However, I can see two reasons why it would have shortened.
The first would be that the "replacement" was really just a spelling change, and teh word never was seen as really different from wingeard, which I can imagine to be pronounced in a similar way as teh modern pronunciation of vineyard (at the very least with a short [i]).
A second one, but this is mere speculation, is that longer vowels tend to get shortened in compounds over time. Many place names that where formed as town became ton.
I would assume it is pronounced in a similar way to wingeard, since that is the actual word, even though someone decided to change the spelling to make it look like a compound that it may never actually have been. If you wonder how this could be possible, look up the history of the word colonel!
Correct answer by oerkelens on October 17, 2020
The vowel is originally long. It is long in the Latin word vīnum, which was borrowed into Germanic, yielding the Old English wīn "wine". And also in the Latin word vīnea, a derivative of vīnum, which developed in French to vigne, the source of the English word vine. (The lines above the vowels are not part of the Latin or Old English spelling systems, but represent our current knowledge of the length of the vowels in these words. A short "i" in Latin would not have remained "i" in French; compare Latin minus, with short i, which turned into French moins.)
The short i in the modern pronunciation is an example of sporadic, irregular vowel shortening. Vowel shortening has occurred in a few English words with the form of compounds, but there are no definite rules I known of to predict which words show it. Other examples are breakfast vs. break and sheep vs. shepherd. Most compounds retain the length of the vowel in the base word.
"English Syllable Structure and Vowel Shortening," by Balogné Bérces Katalin, categorizes vine/vineyard as a case of a "synchronically unmotivated" vowel length alternation (§6.6, p. 40).
Answered by herisson on October 17, 2020
Get help from others!
Recent Questions
Recent Answers
© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP