Breaking (linguistics) Totally Explained

Everything about Breaking Linguistics totally explained

In historical linguistics, breaking is the change of a monophthong to diphthong (diphthongisation).

Breaking in Old English

Proto-Germanic stressed short e, a becomes eo, ea regularly in Old English when followed by h or by r, l + another consonant. Examples are:

PG *fallan > feallan "fall"
PG *erþō > eorþe "earth"

Breaking in Old Norse

Proto-Germanic stressed short e becomes ja or (before u) jǫ regularly in Old Norse except after w, r, l. Examples are:

PG *ek "I" > (east) ON jak, Swedish jag, Danish jeg (but Jutlandic æ, a, Icelandic ek > ég, Norwegian eg)

PG *hertō "heart" > ON hjarta, Swedish hjarta, Danish hjerte

PG *erþuz "earth" > ON jǫrð, Swedish, Danish jord According to some scholars, the diphthongisation of e is an unconditioned sound change, whereas other scholars speak about epenthesis or umlaut.

Breaking in Proto-Indo-European

Some scholars believe that PIE i, u has a kind of breaking before an original laryngeal in Greek, Armenian and Tocharian, whereas the other Indo-European languages have monophthongs. Typical examples are:

PIE * > * "alive" > Gk. ζωός, Toch. B śāw-, śāy- (but Skt. jīvá-, Lat. vīvus)

PIE * > * "front side" > Gk. πρόσωπον "face", Toch. B pratsāko "breast" (but Skt. prátīka-)

PIE * > * "long" > Gk. δηρός, Arm. *twār > erkar (Skt. dūrá-, Lat. dūrus). However, the hypothesis isn't adopted by most handbooks.

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