고대영어 켄트 방언의 전설모음 변화 연구

A Study on Front Vowel Changes in Kentish Old English

The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes of front vowels in Kentish Old English within the framework both of phonology and sociolinguistics. This phenomenon has been treated as a unique phonological change in the field of the history of English(Campbell 1959; Hogg 1992). There are several reasons for it, but, among them, the most striking one is that all front vowels (except /i/) changed to one vowel position which is /e/ in Kentish Old English. In addition to this idiosyncratic vowel change in Kentish Old English, a sociolinguistic aspect is dealt with in this paper. For instance, Kentish was affected by other dialects sociolinguistically such as geographical and political factors. Namely, in order to get a better understanding of Kentish vowel change, disciplines such as sociology, geography, politics and even genetics need to be associated with the field of linguistics.