Compensatory lengthening


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, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered by consonant loss may be considered an extreme form of fusion. Both types may arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count.

Examples

English

An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless velar fricative and its palatal allophone were lost from the language. For example, in the Middle English of Chaucer's time the word night was phonemically ; later the was lost, but the was lengthened to to compensate, causing the word to be pronounced.
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 : in Scottish English, girl has a short followed by a light alveolar, as presumably it did in Middle English; in Southern British English, the has dropped out of the spoken form and the vowel has become a "long schwa".

Classical Hebrew and Aramaic

Compensatory lengthening in Classical Hebrew and Aramaic is dependent on the class of consonant which follows the prefix.
E.g. :
Compensatory lengthening is very common in Ancient Greek. It is particularly notable in forms where n or nt comes together with s, y, or i. The development of nt + y was perhaps thus:
Forms with this type of compensatory lengthening include the nominative singular and dative plural of many participles, adjectives, and nouns, the 3rd person plural ending for present and future active of all verbs, and the 3rd person singular present of athematic verbs:
In the evolution of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, there is a first stage in which consonant clusters with dissimilar consonants preceded by a short vowel undergo assimilation resulting in consonant clusters with similar consonants. In the second stage, the first consonant of the cluster or geminate was lost, which was accompanied by the lengthening of that vowel and sometimes additional nasalization. In Punjabi, only the first stage occurred, while most of the other modern Indo-Aryan languages underwent the second stage as well.
SanskritPunjabiHindiTranslation
हस्तः ਹੱਥ हाथ hand
सप्त ਸੱਤ सात seven
अष्ट ਅੱਠ आठ eight
कर्तनम् ਕੱਟਨਾ काटना cutting
कर्म ਕੰਮ काम work
अर्धम् ਅੱਧਾ आधा half
अद्य ਅੱਜ आज today
सर्पः ਸੱਪ साँप snake
अक्षि ਅੱਖ आँख eye
दुग्धम् ਦੁੱਧ दूध milk
पुत्रः ਪੁੱਤ पूत son