英语声音语言学家如何知道古音.pdfVIP

How Do Linguists Know About Ancient Pronunciation? • Looking at the alphabet—letter values do not change at random, should be somewhat similar as today, especially consonants. Vowels are a little tricky— they tend to change more. • Usually no strict rules in past Old English for spelling, so scribes probably wrote as they spoke—with evidence from language variation. • Comparative reconstruction—working back from present known forms. • Known sound changes, e.g., hit ing it can easily happen as initial h dropped also in Modern English