Rauch Irmengard. The Old High German Diphthongization: A Description of a Phonemic Change

Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967. — 130 p. — (Janua Linguarum. Series Practica, 36).For the historical linguist the functioning of sound change is a primary concern. If a sound change is a syntagmatic tendency which becomes structurally relevant then the diachronic structuralist must undertake to describe the resulting phonemic change by all those factors peculiar to an actual historical event. Further, methodological adequacy requires that the description of the phonemic change be complete.
This book is a dissertation completed in August 1962 at the University of Michigan. Except for a few minor modifications it is being published in the original. Its purpose is to demonstrate by means of a given historical sound change, the OHG Diphthongization, how a definitive description, formed by the application of a definite linguistic methodology, can lead to a thorough explication and to the theoretical solidification of a phonemic change as a historic event.