JUST PUBLISHED: Joshua Booth, 'Open syllable lengthening and diphthongisation in Upper Middle High German: evidence from verse'

In this paper, now published open access in the Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, Joshua Booth considers the relative chronologies and interactions of two Middle High German sound changes: the lengthening of all short vowels in stressed open syllables (‘open syllable lengthening’), and the diphthongisation of the high vowels /i:, y:, u:/. The paper re-evaluates the evidence of a thirteenth-century Parzival manuscript — what exactly does the scribe mean by the circumflex accent mark? — and challenges the view that open syllable lengthening triggered diphthongisation. Congratulations, Josh!