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Unstable fricatives: On Gothic pliuhan and Old

English flēon

GÖRan Kjellmer

To cite this article: GÖRan Kjellmer (1995) Unstable fricatives: On Gothic pliuhan and Old
English flēon, <i>WORD</i>, 46:2, 207-223, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1995.11435942

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1995.11435942

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 GORAN K J E L L M E R - - - - - - - - - - - -

Unstable fricatives: On Gothic jJliuhan

and Old English fleon*

Abstract. There has been an almost century-long debate about the

origin of Gothic p!iuhan 'to flee' and its relations to semantically cog-
nate words like Old English fleon, Old High German fliohan and Old
Icelandic flyia. Traditionally it has been assumed that fl- developed out
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of pt-, and that the Gothic word hence represents a more original state
than the West and North Germanic forms, but another school of thought
contends that the change took place in the opposite direction, fl- being
original and pt- secondary. The conflict is as yet unresolved.
The present paper attempts to throw some light on the problem by
placing it in a more general context and asks the question, If fl- >
pt- and pt- > fl- are both theoretically possible, which change or sub-
stitution is intrinsically the more probable one? Material from Latin,
Russian, German and English is adduced to suggest that [6] relatively
frequently changes into [f] or is replaced by [f] but that the opposite
rarely if ever happens. Reference is then made to studies of sound
substitutions, acquisition rates and salience phenomena. As they lend
support to the assumption that the predominance of the change or sub-
stitution [6] > [f] over the opposite one, [f] > [6], is natural rather than
accidental, it is concluded that we are justified in allowing this tendency
to play a part in the debate about the origin of the 'flee' words and in
seeing it as an argument in favour of the traditional explanation.

1. Introduction. One classic but very specific problem in the realm

of Old Germanic may give rise to speculation about more general
linguistic affairs which could throw some light on the topic in question.
The problem is this.
The verb 'to flee' is piiuhan in Gothic butfleon < *fleohan in Old
English, fliohan in Old Saxon and Old High German, fliii in Old
Frisian, and flyia in Old Icelandic. The parallel existence of pt- in
Gothic andfl- in the other Germanic languages in what is demonstrably
the same word is problematic. If the difference represents a change,
this is not the type of change normally encountered in Germanic lan-
guages, where the place of articulation is generally preserved while the
manner of articulation or the voice can be modified; Grimm's law is a
good example. And if we assume that one of the types developed out

207
 208 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

of the other, it is not clear which of the two is the original out of which
the other developed.
To generalise a little, it could be said that two schools of thought
have arisen with regard to the pl-!fl- question. The traditional standpoint
is that Gothic p!iuhan represents an older stage and that the fl- of the
West and North Germanic 'flee words' has developed out of Primitive
Germanic pt-. One reason for this is easy to see: Gothic, being the oldest
Germanic language on record, is normally considered to have more
original forms than the other Germanic languages. A theory that sug-
gests that Gothic forms are secondary in relation to West and North
Germanic forms is therefore a priori a little suspect. Many handbooks
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state, and some argue for, the traditional view, e.g. Skeat 1910, Kieck-
ers 1928:212, Krause 1953: §38.3, Krahe 1963: § 105 and Onions 1966.
However, the traditional view was contested early on. Zupitza
1896 maintains that the formal and semantic similarity between the
'flee' words and the Germanic words meaning 'to fly' (OE fleogan,
OS and OHG fliogan, OFris fliiiga and Oicel fliuga-there is no
corresponding Gothic word on record) makes it possible that the two
groups of words were originally identical, in which case a commonf/-
origin (< Indo-European *pi-) of the groups could be posited and
Gothic pliuhan could be seen as developed out of *fliuhan. He envis-
ages an assimilatory change of initial fl- where the l is palatal to fPl-
> pi- and proposes that original Gothic pl- remains (as in ptaihan), as
does original Gothic fl- before a back vowel (as in flodus) (131).
Nordmeyer 1935: 216-19 suggests that Gothic pi- is to be regarded as
the product of an assimilation of fl- > pz-, and assumes that the
exceptions to this rule iflodus, flahta, flauts, etc.) were introduced into
Wulfila's text by Ostrogothic scribes. Prokosch 1939: 87 follows
Zupitza in accepting Gmc. fl- as original and considers Gothic pz- an
assimilation. 1 Several other scholars, like Penzl 1954:411 and Braune
1959 § 139, Anm. 8, concur, not least because no convincing etymology
has been suggested for *p!iuhan- ( < a hypothetical Indo-European
*tl-); conversely, a reasonable etymology may be suggested for
*fliwyan-, which may thus be thought relevant to* p!iuhan- as well, viz.
IE *pleu-k-. Marchand 1956: 150 does not quite commit himself but
concludes that ''the appearance of fl- and pi- in words which should
etymologically begin with the same sound must represent dialect mix-
ture in Wulfila's own speech." Matzel 1962: 220-37 maintains that
assimilatory influence from palatal [ 1] + a following fricative changed
PGmc fl- > Goth. pt. 2 Morris 1970 also (implicitly) favours the fl- >
pi- option s.v. [IE] pleu-. 3
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 209

On the other hand, a number of scholars have defended the tra-

ditional theory and/or criticised the new one. Partridge 1958 (s. v. flee~
and Scardigli 1973: 36f. regard PGmc *pliuhan- as the original form
and see the semantic and formal similarity between *Pliuhan- 'flee'
and *fliu-yan- 'fly' as likely to promote analogical influence of fl- in
*fliu-yan- on WGmc and NGmc developments of *pliuhan-. This is
also the view of the OED. 4 Nor has the origin· of the hypothetical
PGmc *pliuhan- gone unexplained; Feist 1939 quotes without endors-
ing them a few possible etymologies, such as Osthoff's suggestion IE
*tlkto, which he finds in Latin locusta. One difficulty in the new theory
is that it presupposes a common origin for the 'flee' words and the 'fly'
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words in the Germanic languages, and yet it is only the latter that
display the change of the velar according to Verner's law (X > Y).
Seebold 1970: 518 is therefore sceptical of a proposed common ori-
gin;5 he also points out that Matzel's suggestion that assimilatory
influence from palatal [ 1] + following fricative changed PGmc fl- >
Goth. pl- leaves several Gothic words unexplained.
According to the traditional hypothesis we must therefore envis-
age a change PGmc pl- (which remained in Gothic) > WGmc and
NGmc fl-, and according to the new hypothesis we must envisage a
change PGmc fl- (which remained in WGmc and NGmc) > Gothic
(EGmc) pl-. As we have seen, none of the evidence adduced in favour
of either hypothesis is entirely convincing. In this situation it is natural
that several scholars should hesitate between the two hypotheses:
Gutenbrunner 1951 :3 6 and Hellquist 1957 s. v. fly 7 are both undecided.
Seebold 1970: 518 presents arguments for and against without com-
mitting himself, 8 and Lehmann 1986, the editor of the latest edition of
Feist's classic Gothic dictionary, concludes s. v. /Jliuhan that the ety-
mology is unclear. Kluge 1989, finally, is also undecided. 9

2. Interchangeability of fricatives. In order to get out of this im-

passe, a slightly different approach could be tried. Could it be that one
of the alternative changes suggested is intrinsically more probable than
the other? Fricatives are often confused or mistaken for one another, as
is particularly noticeable (and annoying) in telephone conversations.
Thawpit, a trademark, can be heard as sawpit, sink as think, free as
three, etc. That fricatives seem to be able to alternate with each other
more or less freely is also shown, for instance, by the way speakers of
English treat an unfamiliar sound which they perceive as a voiceless
fricative reminiscent of Ill, namely Welsh /l/, spelt ll: 16ll, lfll and /xi/
 210 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

all occur in English, in addition to Ill and /kl/. 10 Flummery, 'a kind of
food made by coagulation of wheat-flour and oatmeal', is thus derived
by the OED from Welsh llymru. The word is used in 1634 by Sir T.
Herbert, who writes "Thlummery"; "the fl- and Herbert's thl- are
attempts to render the sound of Welsh 11-." OED. Such unprincipled
variation, or what looks like it, can also be seen in more or less
onomatopoeic words, as in Swedish fnoske 'tinder', related to Icel.
fnj6skr, hnj6skr and Swedish dialect snjosk (Wessen 1966). 11 Cf. also
Swedishflamsa, with its synonymous variants hamsa, fjamsa, slamsa
(Wessen 1966). 12
Fricatives are thus sometimes liable to be used for one another,
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accidentally or more permanenfiy. That is not to say, however, that

any fricative is equally likely to be used for any other fricative. The
first impression of confusion may be misleading. On the question of
which sound can replace which other sound, J.-C. Lafon writes:

The replacement of one speech sound by another is not a random process, but
depends on the significant acoustic feature in question.-The speech sound
which is most often incorrectly heard is the labio-dental [f] (more than 10 per
cent distortion); in general, the sibilants are most often mistaken for one an-
other, voiced ones for voiced ones, unvoiced ones for unvoiced. (Lafon 1968:
96).

If we assume that the variation of the initial sounds in Go. p!iu-

han, ON fljja, OE fleon, OHG fliohan represents a sound change or
a case of sound substitution in either direction, it may be rewarding to
find out if the change or substitution is likely to occur primarily in only
one of those directions. The hypothesis would thus be that it is not
fortuitous if pt- > fl- rather thanf/- > pt-, or vice versa.

3. Evidence for directionality. There are indeed some signs of a

certain preferential order between some of the fricatives that take part
in variations or changes in different languages. This is not to say that
the order is an absolute one, only that certain types of changes between
fricatives seem to be better evidenced than others; they may therefore
be more likely to occur than others. In what follows, we shall take a
look at the relation between [6] and [f) and leave other similar relations
for another occasion.
There are a number of cases where [6] and [f] occur in different
variants, regional or chronological, of a language.
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 211

A. Latin

(a) IE dh- > [th-] > [8-] >Lat. [f-] 13 , or perhaps IE dh- > [o-]
> [8-] > Lat. [f] 14 • Prokosch 1939: 41 argues that what are
generally represented as IE bh/dh/gh were voiceless stops in Ienis
pronunciation and writes them 'fl/8/x, respectively; he would
therefore see the change in question as IE [8-] >Lat. [f-]. Which-
ever path is followed, it thus appears probable that the last step in
the development was [8-] > [f-]. For instance, IE *dhe-corre-
sponds to Lat.je-(ci) 'did, made', and IE *dhU-mo- to Lat.fiimus
'smoke'.
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(b) Roman [f] for Greek [8]: lasfe is a spelling in Pompeii (in
Roman letters) for Greek ('A a.' <T'fl'YJ = ) 'A a.' cr811 'mockery, insult',
Allen 1987: 23. 15

B. Russian

Russian [f] for Byzantine or Modern Greek [8] (Allen 1987: 23):
"Fedotov Russ.: patr. from the given name Fedot (Gk Theodotos
'God-given', a less common equivalent of Theodoros 'God-
gift')." Hanks and Hodges 1988.
Russian Fyodor Greek Theodoros. "Gk Th- regularly gives: Russ.
F-" Hanks and Hodges 1988, s.v. Theodore.
Russian Marfa for Greek Martha, Jespersen 1932: 36.

C. German

German finster, Old High German finstar, thinstar from prim.

Germanic *pimsra-, Pfeifer 1989. 16

D. English

(a) Placenames (Jacobsson 1962:240):

Farmington < OE pornmere.
Farnham< OE pyrnum.
Finedon < OE ping.
Finger < ON ping-haugr.
Fingest < OE ping.
 212 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

(b) Historical forms:

Kiff(e) for kith in kith and kin 1573, 1620, 1719 (OED).
Swarf(e), swarfie for swarth, swarthy 17th c. (OED).
Frough, frow ("Obsol. exc. dial.") 'liable to break or give way,
... frail, brittle': "Of obscure origin: the forms point back to
OE. *fr6h, or possibly proh: a word of the latter form is
represented by progum 'rancidis', pron 'rancida'" OED.
Feaberry, feabes 'gooseberry', prob. < ME theve-berry 16th c.
(Jacobsson 1962:241).
Fill 'the shaft of a cart' < ME thille, eModE (Jacobsson 1962:
241).
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Swaffe 'swath' < OE swiejJ 1688 (OED).

(c) Child language:
In English and American children's language, [6] is frequently
realised as [f): frow, free for throw, three; "in Haberton's
'Helen's Babies' findet sich u.a. froed fiir threw (throw schwach
flektiert), troojfiir truth, wiffiir with (amerikanische Aussprache
[wip])", Jespersen 1932:36. 17
(d) Regional varieties of modern English:
• Cockney: ''Another of the very well known characteristics of
Cockney is TH Fronting. It involves the replacement of the dental
fricatives, [6, o] by labiodentals, [f) and [v] respectively. This
makes thin a homophone offin, [fm], and brother ['brAv~] rhyme
with lover." Wells 1982: 328. "Hypercorrect [6] is often to be
heard in feather ['6eo~]." Wells 1984: 57. "This [ [f, v] for [6,
o] ] was formerly confined to London speech, but now covers the
whole of the Home Counties and is spreading so fast that younger
speakers as far apart as Exeter, Manchester, Sheffield and Nor-
wich have begun adopting this pronunciation in the 1980s''
(Trudgill 1990: 75f.).
• Other Southern English varieties: ''In mehreren Mundartgebieten
wird thistle mitfbezeugt, fiir think, something, cloth, moth, sheath
wird f angegeben in West Somerset. In Bicester bei Oxford
sprachen meine Gewahrsleute p in thing, three, thirteen, f in
thistle, threat, thatched, path, blacksmith" (Horn-Lehnert 1954:
774).
• Black English [6] > [f) medially and finally: nothing ['n~fm],
mouth [mauf], Wells 1982: 557-58.
• Southern American English [-6] > [-f) in final position: both
[bouf], Wells 1982: 553.
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 213

• Scottish [f] for original [6]:

fain 'damp, not thoroughly dried' [A variant of THAIN]
(SND).
feet. Also feit. [A variant form of THEAT] (SND).
Jeff 'a bad smell' [ON pejr a smell] (Robinson 1985).
feif [A corrupt form of thief] (SND).
freff 'shy' [prob by assim and metathesis f THARF] (Robinson
1985).
freid 'thread' (Robinson 1985).
frock, alternating with throck 'the third, fourth, or fifth pair
of oxen in a twelve-oxen plough team' [cf ModEng dial
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throck the sharebeam of a plough, OE proc] (Robinson

1985).
frunter (also thrunter) 'a three-year-old sheep' [OE pri-win-
ter] (Robinson 1985).
liff 'A segment of an orange' [A modern variant of LITH 'a
limb, member'] (SND).
mui(f)f, muph, m¢J, meef. Also muith. 'A warm, moist at-
mosphere' [ON m6oa] (SND).
tfearn [A s.Sc. variant of THAIRM, q.v., catgut] (SND).
tferm 'Cat-gut, esp. a fiddle-string.' [A variant of THERM]
(SND).
t.Fuirsday Also F(e)ursday, Fo(a)rs, Foers-, Foors-; Feers-,
Fiers- (ne.Sc.). Sc forms of Eng. Thursday, "once in
gen. usage but now obs. in Lth., sm. and s.Sc." (SND).
All the above cases show [f] for original [6]. There also are some
cases where the opposite development seems to have taken place, i.e.
where an original [f] seems to have developed into, or been replaced
by, a [6]:
Thornship [ON forn] (Jacobsson 1962:242).
Thrognall [OE Jroggena] (Jacobsson 1962:242).
[6] is found infrock andfrom in Shropshire and in deaf in various
dialects (Jacobsson 1962:242).
Thistolow occurs twice in 1684 forfistolow (Jacobsson 1962:242).
Scottish douth 'dispirited', probably variant of DOWF 'dull'
[?ON daufr 'deaf' or Mid. Du doof 'deaf' or Eng. dial. doaf
'dough'] (SND)
Scottish thrae, throm = frae, from (Robinson 1985).
Scottish througal = frugal (Robinson 1985).
However, in view of the very large number of cases, like those given
above, where English has replaced [6] by [f], it is very probable that
 214 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

most or all of the "exceptions" are hypercorrections. Cf. Horn-Leh-

nert 1954:775, Jacobsson 1962:242. In any case, the material demon-
strates clearly that [f] tends to replace [e] rather than the other way
round.

4. Possible explanations. The material presented above comes from

many different sources and suggests very strongly that there is some
kind of affinity between [e] and [f], which makes it natural to substi-
tute one for the other. Jespersen 1932: 36 comments on the articulatory
similarity between [e]/[p] and [f]: "Die Ahnlichkeit ist natiirlich am
gross ten beim interdentalen [p] '.. aber auch beim postdentalen ist sie
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gross genug, urn den haufigen, Ubergang von [p] zu [f] und eben so
von [5] zu [v] begreiflich erscheinen zu lassen." Lindblad 1986:32
also discusses their acoustic as well as articulatory similarity and con-
cludes that this makes them unfit as phonemes in one and the same
language. English with minimal pairs like thin: fin is seen as an ex-
ception to this tendency. (But note that English is not alone in having
the two phonemes; languages like Icelandic, Spanish and modern
Greek spring to mind.) Cf. also endnote 16. The adjustment of the
articulatory organs from apico-interdental to labiodental and vice
versa 18 which brings about the change from one of the fricatives to the
other is small, and perceptually the change is also small. It is hence
natural that the fricatives in question should occasionally be found to
replace each other. What is not at all obvious at first, however, is why
this similarity should result in a certain "directionality" in the substi-
tutions: if [e] is similar to [f], [f] is also similar to [e]. Nevertheless,
there is this clear tendency in the material for [f] to replace [e] rather
than the other way round. Why is this?
One dimension that may be relevant in this connexion is ease
versus difficulty in pronunciation. This will be relevant if we assume
that out of a few similar sounds a speaker will be likely to prefer the
one involving the least effort on his part, occasionally even to the
extent of allowing it to replace the more difficult alternative. It is true
that the subject must be handled with some caution, since what is
regarded as difficult in the individual perspective may be easy in a
more general perspective, and vice versa. 19 But even so, phonological
studies of first-language learning strategies have suggested, or even
established, that there are general sequential tendencies in language
acquisition, tendencies which may vary in individual cases but which
hold good in general. Jakobson (1968) has been seminal in this respect,
and although he has been criticised20 because his general approach
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 215

leaves no room for individual variations, ''his theory is still the most
detailed, explicit, and suggestive one available" (Ferguson and Far-
well1975:434). It seems natural to me to interpret such ordering in the
acquisition of phonological units as a reflection of their intrinsic dif-
ficulty. Investigations seeking to establish tendencies of this kind will
therefore be helpful at this point.
A number of studies have been made investigating the ages at which
samples of English children master the pronunciation of different pho-
nemes. Linell and Jennische 1982: 34 report on one such investigation,
and Hulit and Howard 1993:286 on three, two of which are relevant
here. 21 The studies are not exactly comparable as they use different
percentages as criteria for mastery (90%, 100%, 75%), but with regard
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to the relation between If! and /6/ they all tell the same story: If! is always
mastered first, two to three years before the mastery of /6/, which is
considered a "difficult sound" (Hulit and Howard 1993:287).
Another aspect of the ease-versus-difficulty question is of course
very pertinent. Children are known to substitute certain sounds for
those they do not yet completely master, and in a study of 90 English
6-year-olds by Singh and Frank 1972 the following results appear
(21lf.):
Replaced phonemes
6 f 0 v
t 19 20 2 0
d 2 1 45 5
b 0 0 0 84
f 74 X 1 2
6 X 1 0 0
s 5 9 0 0
Substituting v 1 0 24 X
phonemes p 0 10 0 0
0 0 0 X 1
m 3 3 0 0
n 0 0 0 0
k 0 0 0 0
g 0 0 0 0
z 0 0 1 0
I 0 0 0 0
IJ 0 0 0 0
Total 104 44 73 92
 216 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

The substitutions were counted for all the children in initial, medial
and final positions, and the total number of substitutions or each in-
dividual phoneme is given in the table. It shows that /6/ is replaced
more than twice as often as If/. Moreover, 161 is replaced by If! in 71%
of the cases (74: 104), whereas If! is replaced by /6/ in only 2% of the
cases (1 :44). When the evolutionary history of individual sound-sys-
tems is concerned, it appears that /6/ generally develops out of If/
rather than vice versa (Linell and Jennische 1982:48). Incidentally, the
fact that /6/ is replaced by If/ much more often than it is replaced by It/,
while inversely /5/ is replaced by /d/ much more often than it is
replaced by /v/, noted by Ferguson 1978:426, could be explained by
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reference to the ease with which' the sounds are acquired: If/ is mas-
tered earlier, in some studies much earlier, than /v/ (one to three years'
difference), whereas /6/ and !51 are mastered more or less simulta-
neously (a maximum of one year's difference). 22
If it is true that If/ is an easier sound to produce than /6/, we might
expect to find that it is also more frequent, in the sense that it is found
in more languages, than /6/. The UCLA Phonological Segment Inven-
tory Database (UPSID) records the phonemic inventories of 317 mod-
ern different languages, representative of different language groups. 23
The approach is thus exclusively synchronic. Even if one has certain
reservations with regard to a process of comparing and equating pho-
nemes across languages, some conclusions about the general nature of
fricatives could be drawn from the data contained in UPSID. The
frequency of voiceless fricatives as seen in this global perspective is
the following (Maddieson 1984:45):

/s/ (various types) found in 266 languages

If! 146
If/ 135
/x/ 75
Iii (various types) 30
lxl 29
liP! 21
161 18
1'$1 17
19>1 16
In/ 13

So If/ is found in 135 languages in the UPSID sample and /6/ in 18.
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 217

The same type of quantitative relationship between the two pho-

nemes appears to obtain in spoken modern English. Bloomfield (1933)
1958: 137 counted the number of phonemes in "a large body of
speech''. Taking the total number of phonemes in the text used as 100
per cent, he arrived at the following percentages for the consonants:

In/ 7.24% /p/ 2.04%

It/ 7.13% If/ 1.84%
/r/ 6.88% lb/ 1.81%
/s/ 4.55% /hi 1.81%
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/d/ 4.31% /rjl 0.96%

II! 3.74% If! 0.82%
1o1 3.43% lgl 0.74%
/z/ 2.97% /j/ 0.60%
/ml 2.78% Jtf! 0.52%
lkl 2.71% ld;31 0.44%
/vi 2.28% 161 0.37%
/w/ 2.08% 131 0.05%

In this text Iff is thus five times as frequent as /6/, which is the least
frequent of all the consonants except one. Our theory would seem to be
supported by material such as this.
In a study of a few contrastive German-English and English-
French problem areas, Eckman 1977 proposes that difficulty in lan-
guage learning is a function, not only of the difference between Ll and
L2 (the native language and the target language) with regard to a set of
features but also of their relative degree of markedness. Markedness is
defined thus:

A phenomenon A in some language is more marked than B if the presence of

A in a language implies the presence of B, but the presence of B does not imply
the presence of A. (320)

If we wish to apply his concept of markedness to the relation between

Iff and /6/, we could again refer to the UPSID sample to find out
whether there is an implicational relationship between the two pho-
nemes in the languages of the world, such that /6/always presupposes
If/ while If/ need not presuppose /6/. In the UPSID sample of 317
modern languages, the situation is the following (Maddieson 1984:
227). The languages that contain If/ and /6/ fall into three groups:
 218 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

(a) 124 languages have only Iff;

(b) 11 languages have both Iff and /6/;
(c ) 7 languages have only /6/.

So in the languages of the world represented m the UPSID sample it is

not the case that the presence of a /6/ presupposes a /f/; seven lan-
guages, the (c) group, have only /6/, viz. Mursi (a Nilo-Saharan lan-
guage), Rukai (Austro-Tai), Burmese and Karen (Sino-Tibetan) and
Chippewyan, Amahuaca and Araucanian (all Amerindian). The West-
ern languages in the sample, on the other hand, are all found in the (a)
and (b) groups. There is thus a possibility that when the pronunciation
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of /6/ is compared with that of If! the greater difficulty of /6/ is not
universal but limited to the languages with which we are here primarily
concerned, the Western languages.
So far we have been most interested in the articulatory side of the
relation between Iff and /6/. It is clear that this side of the communi-
cation is of primary importance if we are to study which phoneme is
the more likely to replace the other. But the perceptory side is not
without interest. If the listener feels the intensity or degree of salience
of either of our two phonemes to be greater than that of the other, he
may in his capacity of speaker feel tempted to substitute the more
salient for the less salient one in his attempt to convey his message as
effectively as possible. 24 In a work from 1960, referred to by Mad-
dieson 1984:50 as the "best language-independent study" in this field,
P. Strevens examined a set of fricatives from the point of view of
intensity or salience and arrived at the following intensity ranking:

Rank Fricative
I /fP/
2 if!
3 !xi
4 /s/
5 1x1
6 Iff
7 161
8 !<I>!

It will be noticed that the ranking is very different from the one of the
UPSID frequency list. Maddieson comments, ''There is no significant
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 219

rank-order correlation between these rankings (Spearman's rho =

.1429). It does not seem that there is any strong case to be made that
intensity predicts frequency. However, the tentative nature of the rank-
ing arrived at by Strevens should be stressed." (50) But note that
"frequency" in this case refers to the number of languages in which
the sound occurs, not to the number of times the sound is used in those
languages. What is of particular interest here, of course, is the fact that
If/ is given as having more intensity than /6/, which, if the above
assumption is correct, would be one more reason for If/ to replace /6/
rather than vice versa.
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5. Conclusion. Let us conclude. There has been an almost century-

long debate about the provenance and history of the Germanic verbs
meaning 'to flee'. A crucial point in the debate has been whether 16-1
as in Gothic piiuhan has developed into If-! as in OEfleon < *fleohan,
in OS and OHG fliohan, in OFris fliii, and in Olcel. flyia, or whether
the development has gone the opposite way. A kind of stalemate now
appears to have been reached. The present paper tries to throw some
light on the question by looking into cases in various languages where
the two sounds have alternated or replaced one another:. There are
instances of the transition [6] > [f] from different periods, and only a
handful of examples of change in the opposite direction have come to
light, examples which may, moreover, be hypercorrections. The rea-
son for this preference of [f] over [f)], it is suggested, is the greater ease
with which the former is produced and, perhaps, the higher intensity
with which it is perceived. If we can then assume that a change [6] >
[f] is somehow more "natural" than the opposite one, [f] > [6], at
least in Western languages, and if other arguments for either develop-
ment in the case of Gothic jJliuhan o= OEfleon < *fleohan, German
fliehen, etc., are inconclusive, the argument of "naturalness" or
"preference" may be allowed to play a part and tip the balance in
favour of [6] > [f]. Without actually clinching the matter, we can thus
claim that the traditional etymology of those words, uncertain as it is,
can be regarded as more attractive than its equally uncertain compet-
itor.

English Department
Goteborg University
S-412 98 Goteborg
Sweden
 220 WORD, VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1995)

ENDNOTES

*I am indebted to Anders-Biirje Andersson, John R. Costello, Per Lindblad, Aimo Seppanen

and Ebbe Vilborg for information and help with some of the references. I am very grateful to
them all.
1
"The verb is related to ON Jliiiga, OE fleogan, OHG Jliogan, and is an extension of IE
plea- by a k-determinant. The simple root occurs in Gk. -rrA£.Fw 'float, swim', . . , L. plait
'rains' .... , Go. J!Odus ... With d-extension it appears in ON fliota, OEfleotan, OS fliotan,
OHG fliozzan 'flow'. Its primary meaning was probably 'floating, even motion, through water.
air, or on land'."
2
"Die gotischen Wiirter mit anlautendem pi-, denen west- und nordgerm. Bildungen mitfl-
entsprechen, zeigen n i c h I den urspriinglichen Anlaut, sondern sind das Produkt eines kombi-
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natorischen Lautwandels in vorwulfil<ll!ischer Zeit: Urspriingliches germ. fl- wurde im Gotischen

zu pi- under der Einwirkung der nachfolgenden Spiranten h, hs, k"', wobei das dem f folgende
alveolare I eine entlabialisierende Wirkung ausgeiibt hat. Die Urspriinglichkeit des anlautenden
germ. fl- wird durch die Etymologie der got. Stamme pliuhlplauh-, plahs- und plaih- bestiitigt.
Diese lassen sich ohne Schwierigkeit auf idg. *pi- zuriickfiihren. Wiirter, die ihnen in Laut,
Bildung and Bedeutung vergleichbar sind, finden sich im Baltischen, Lateinischen und Griechi-
schen." The reason for the assumption that h, hs, k"' were operative in the change is that they
"ihrer Artikulationsbasis nach aile drei dem post-dentalen p niiher liegen als dem labialen f"
(228). (!)
3
"To flow. I ... II. Extended form *pleuk- I. Germanic *fliugan, to fly, in Old English
fleogan, to fly ... 3. Probably Germanic *Jliuhan, to run away, in Old Englishf/eon, to flee".
4
"As the original initial p has become fin all the Teut. langs. exc. Gothic, those forms of
the vb. which according to Verner's law change h into g came to coincide with the corresponding
forms of *fleugan to FLY; hence in all these langs. the two vbs have been more or less confused
together." (s.v. FLEE)
5
"Gm. pleuh-a-, intr. 'fliehen' hat keine sichere Vergleichsmiiglichkeit. Falls man an pleu-
'flieBen' anschlieBen will (vgl. fleut-a- undfleug-a-), muB man entweder annehmen, daB 'flie-
hen' und 'fliegen' ursprungsgleich waren, und der grammatische Wechsel zur Diffenzierung
verwendet wurde (was fiir diese friihe Zeit sehr unwahrscheinlich ist); oder man muB den Ver-
gleich von 'fliegen' mit seiner lit. Entsprechung aufgeben und eine auBerhalb des Gm. nicht
belegte gh-Erweiterung ansetzen."
6
"Es ist unsicher, auf welcher Seite die Neuerung steht (unter Umstanden hatte schon das
Germ. Doppelformen), da die idg. Grundlage noch nicht festgestellt ist."
7
"ovisst om av germ. *pleuh- el. *fleuh-; snarast dock av den fiirra formen (got. har iiven
forb. f/-); ... I alia hiindelser, trots framstiillda tolkningsfiirslag, dunkelt."
M"Das Nebeneinander von fl- und pi- im Anlaut ist noch immer ungekliirt . . . . Die
Beurteilung des etymologischen Wertes dieser Anlautgruppe muB deshalb offen bleiben."
9
"Der Wechsel gt. p/--wg./nordg. fl- in bestimmten Wiirtern is bis heute nicht ausreichend
erkliirt .... Die Etymologie dieser Wiirter muB deshalb offen bleiben."
10
"Welsh Iii is replaced by English /II or /81/ or /fl/ or /kl/, as Llanedyrn /I an' Edm/,
Llangollen /lan'go81;m/, Llanelli /l;)'nE81i:/,/klan'Efli:/ etc.; also by a pseudo-Welsh cluster /xl/,
as in /xlan' exli:/." Wells 1982:389. Further instances of such sound substitutions are provided by
English forms of Welsh personal names. The anglicized form of the Welsh personal name
L/ywerch occurs as Flower (Hanks and Hodges 1988, s.v. Flower). The English name Floyd is
a surname used as a first name, ·'either deriving from Welsh Lloyd, in which case it means 'grey,
hoary', or from Irish name Flood, where its meaning is 'will (of God)'" (Dunkling and Gosling
 KJELLMER: UNSTABLE FRICATIVES 221

1983). The name of Shakespeare's Welsh captain Fluellen represents a corruption of Welsh
Llewelyn (OED s. v. Flue/lin).
11
"Formvaxlingen: isl. hnjliskr, sv, dial. knosk( e), snbske osv. visar han pa ljudharmande
urspr., sannol. syftande pa ljudet vid fiirbranningen." Hellquist 1957. Wessen misspells hnjliskr
as hjnliskr.
12
Hellquist 1957: "s-avl. av en ung variantrot pa-m till f I an a."
13
Matzel1962: 226, citing W. S. Allen, "IE voiced aspirates in Latin", Archivum Linguis-
ticum 10: 112.
14
Matzel 1962: 226, citing L. L. Hammerich, PBB 77: 13.
15
"For the interchange of dental and labial is only likely to take place in the case of fricative
articulations, [6] and [f], which are acoustically rather similar ... " Allen ib.
16
"Vorauszusetzen ist eine Stammform germ. *pimsra-, die einen Obergangslaut t auf-
nimmt und deren anlautender Dental durch Dissimilation vor einem dem Wurzelvokal folgenden
n (aus lilterem m) in den Labial f iibergeht, ... ·', s. v. jin.Her.
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17
John Habberton's (sic) Helen's Babies, which came out in 1876 in America, describes the
struggles of a bachelor uncle to look after two small nephews.
18
0hde and Sharf 1992:128. With Chomsky and Halle and others, the change is one between
+coronal and -coronal (Hulit and Howard 1993:277-279).
19
That a Swedish learner of English may find the pronunciation of voiced /z/ difficult need
not mean that the sound is difficult in itself, only that he is not used to producing it as it does not
exist in his first-language repertoire. See also Eckman 1977, below.
20
See e.g. Linell and Jennische 1982: 30ff.
21
The third gives no age for the mastery of /6/.
22
Linell and Jennische 1982: 34; Hulit and Howard 1993:286.
23
Maddieson 1984: Ch. 10.
24
Cf. Maddieson 1984: 49: "These sounds [those which have the greatest acoustic energy]
would seem to be the most desirable to incorporate in a language if that language is going to have
good transmission properties."

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