Sound change or analogy? Monosyllabic lengthening in German and some of its consequences

Abstract Although the vowels of many monosyllabic words have been lengthened from Middle High German to Modern Standard German (e.g., [glas] > ‘glass’), it has only recently (and sporadically) been considered that the lengthened forms might be due to a phonological change (cf. Naiditsch and Kusmenko 1992; Page 2001, 2007). Traditionally, vowel length in the relevant cases is explained on the basis of analogical-morphological principles such as paradigm uniformity. In the present paper we will defend the view that vowel length is the result of a genuine phonological change, namely monosyllab... Mehr ...