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The History of the Graphematic Foot in English and German Martin Evertz Download (399.38 kB) Abstract. Suprasegmental graphematics holds that there are units in alphabetical writing systems comprising more than one segment. While units such as the graphematic syllable and the graphematic word seem to be well established, the graphematic foot was only recently proposed. This paper provides further insights into this unit by discussing diachronic data from English and German. There are two phenomena that make the graphematic foot especially visible: graphematic geminates in English and German and the silent <e> in English. Both phenomena coded segmental information in earlier stages of the languages, i.e., spelling geminates coded phonological geminates and the final -e in English coded schwa. At some time, phonological geminates in both languages and the word-final schwa in English disappeared. That rendered the original functions of these spelling devices obsolete. However, instead of vanishing, graphematic geminates and the final -e acquired new functions connected to the graphematic foot. The phonological segments, which were coded by the discussed phenomena, developed because of suprasegmental conditions: geminates and the word-final schwa played a major role in the development of the vowel quantity systems of both languages, which is connected to syllable and foot structure. In today's systems, the graphematic foot bidirectionally corresponds to the phonological foot and thus helps the reader to gain information about the phonological foot and syllable structure of a word. This new diachronic approach may not only enhance our understanding of the unit graphematic foot but it may also help to understand how and why suprasegmental units developed in writing systems in the first place. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36824/2018-graf-ever References References in BIB How to cite How to cite in BIB Becker, Thomas (1996). “Zur Repräsentation der Vokallänge”. In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 15, pp. 3–21. Britton, Derek (2012). “Degemination in English, with Special Reference to the Middle English Period”. In: Analysing Older English. Ed. by David Denison et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233–243. Butt, Matthias and Peter Eisenberg (1990). “Schreibsilbe und Sprechsilbe”. In: Zu einer Theorie der Orthographie. Ed. by Christian Stetter. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 33–64. Clements, G. N. and S.J. Keyser (1983). CV Phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cook, Vivian (2004). The English Writing System. London: Routledge. Davis, Stuart (2011). “Geminates”. In: The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Ed. by Marc van Oostendorp et al. Malden, MA, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 837–859. 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Turk}, TITLE = {{A Prosody Tutorial for Investigators of Auditory Sentence Processing}}, JOURNAL = {{Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}}, YEAR = {1996}, VOLUME = {25}, NUMBER = {2}, PAGES = {193--247}, } @INCOLLECTION{Simmler2000a, AUTHOR = {Franz Simmler}, EDITOR = {Werner Besch and Anne Betten and Oskar Reichmann and Stefan Sonderegger}, TITLE = {{Phonetik und Phonologie, Graphetik und Graphematik des Althochdeutschen}}, BOOKTITLE = {{Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung. HSK 2.2}}, PUBLISHER = {de Gruyter}, ADDRESS = {Berlin}, YEAR = {2000}, PAGES = {1155--1170}, } @BOOK{Venezky1999, AUTHOR = {Richard L. Venezky}, TITLE = {{The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography}}, PUBLISHER = {{The Guilford Press}}, ADDRESS = {New York, London}, YEAR = {1999}, } @INCOLLECTION{Vennemann1982, AUTHOR = {Vennemann, Theo}, EDITOR = {Theo Vennemann}, TITLE = {{Zur Silbenstruktur der deutschen Standardsprache}}, BOOKTITLE = {{Silben, Segmente, Akzente}}, PUBLISHER = {Niemeyer}, ADDRESS = {Tübingen}, YEAR = {1982}, PAGES = {261--305}, } @BOOK{Wiese2000, AUTHOR = {Wiese, Richard}, TITLE = {{The Phonology of German}}, EDITION = {2}, PUBLISHER = {{Oxford University Press}}, ADDRESS = {Oxford}, YEAR = {2000}, } @INCOLLECTION{Zec2007, AUTHOR = {Draga Zec}, EDITOR = {Lacy, Paul de}, TITLE = {{The syllable}}, BOOKTITLE = {{The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology}}, PUBLISHER = {Cambridge University Press}, ADDRESS = {Cambridge}, YEAR = {2007}, PAGES = {161--194}, } @INCOLLECTION{davis2011, AUTHOR = {Stuart Davis}, EDITOR = {Marc van Oostendorp and Colin J. 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