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■ #5708. 2重字 <gh> の起源 --- <ch>, <sh>, <th>, <wh> と考え合わせて [grapheme][graphotactics][orthography][spelling][gh][digraph][h][consonant][silent_letter][diacritical_mark][grapheme][yogh]

　昨日の記事「#5707. 2重字 <gh> の起源」 ([2024-12-11-1]) に続き，<gh> がいかにして出現したかについて．英語綴字史の古典を著わした Scragg (46--47) に，次のくだりがある．

   The use of <h> as a diacritic in <ch> and <sh>, indicating that <c> and <s> have a pronunciation different from that normally expected of those consonants^a, was not new to English when <ch> was introduced from French, for <th> had earlier been used alongside <þ> (cf. footnotes to pp. 2^b and 17). Both <ch> in French and <th> in English derive from Latin orthography, use of <h> as a diacritic in Latin being made possible by the disappearance of the sounds represented by <h> from the language in the late classical period. As a result of the establishment in English of diacritic <h> in <ch> and <th>, other consonant groups were formed on the same pattern. The grapheme <gh> has already been discussed (p. 23^c). <wh> has a rather different history, for it began in Old English as an initial consonantal combination <hw> corresponding to /xw/. Assimilation of the group to a single voiceless consonant /ʍ/ had taken place by the late Old English period, and Middle English scribes, associating the sequence <hw> for the single phoneme with the use of <h> as a fricative marker in other graphemes, reversed the graphs to <wh>.
   English scribes' incorporation into their spelling system of the grapheme <ch>, and the 'consequential' changes which resulted in the creation of <sh> and <wh>, were made possible by their knowledge of Anglo-Norman conventions.

　この引用文のなかに同著内への参照が何カ所があるが，そちらを参照すると重要な記述がみつかったので，引用者による注記符号に対応させるかたちで以下に参照先の解説文を掲載する．

^a I.e. <h> as a fricative marker, allowing for the fact that <sh> is historically a simplification of <sch>. (fn. 2 to p. 46)

^b Latin <th> had always been recognised as an alternative to thorn by English writers; even before the Norman Conquest, foreign names were spelt with either: Elizabeth or Elizabeþ, Thomas or þomas. (fn. 2 to p. 2)

^c <ȝ> was also used in Middle English for the two allophones of /j/ which occurred after a vowel: [ç] and [x]. These two sounds gave scribes considerable difficulty in Middle English; among the many graphemes representing them are the Anglo-Norman <s>, the Old English <h>, the new grapheme <ȝ>, and the last two combined as <ȝh>. In the fifteenth century, when the distinction between <ȝ> and <g> became blurred, this combination was written <gh>, and this is the sequence which has survived in a great many words in which [ç] and [x] were once heard, or still are in northern dialects, e.g. high, ought, night, bough. (fn. 2 to p. 23)

　以上より，今回の話題に関連する重要な点を箇条書きすると，次の通り．

　(1) <th> は古英語期にも用いられることがあった
　(2) 2重字 <ch> と <th> はおおもとはラテン語正書法に由来する
　(3) <h> が発音区別符（号） (diacritical_mark) として用いられるようになったのは，古典期後のラテン語で h が無音化し，<h> が解放されたから
　(4) 2文字目に <h> をもつ既存の2重字のパターンが，アングロノルマン語の綴字慣習を知っていた英語写字生の手により，他へも拡大した
　(5) 2文字目に <h> をもつ2重字は，（h が本来的に摩擦音なので）摩擦音を示す

　<gh> を含む2重字の起源と発達が徐々に見えてきた．

　・ Scragg, D. G. A History of English Spelling. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1974.

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