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Article published In: NOWELE
Vol. 76:2 (2023) ► pp.127–152

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The rise and fall and rise of the digraph 〈oa〉 in English

ORCiD logo with link | Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Published online: 12 December 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.00077.ste
Abstract
The present paper examines the history of the digraph 〈oa〉 in English: it is relatively rare in OE and early ME, falls out of use in late ME, and reappears in the late fifteenth century. Different lexemes have been spelt with 〈oa〉 in the different language periods, but in the majority of cases, the vowel so represented is the reflex of early ME /ɔ:/ or OE o in an open syllable; hence, the digraph is clearly phonetically conditioned. The paper also investigates the graphotactic constraints on the orthographic variants 〈oa〉, 〈oCe〉, 〈oe〉.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.StE words with 〈oa〉: Etymology
  • 3.The history of 〈oa〉
    • 3.1Middle English uses of 〈oa〉
    • 3.2Early Modern English uses of 〈oa〉
      • A corpus of Middle English local documents (MELD)
      • The Paston Letters
      • Early English books online (EEBO)
      • The Malaga Corpus of Early Modern English scientific prose
    • 3.3Fifteenth-century professional scribes, early printers and spelling reformers
  • 4.The distribution of 〈oaC〉 vs. 〈oCe〉 vs. 〈oe〉
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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