Jerzy Kuryłowicz and Runic Evolution

- 8 mins
theory

Runes, especially as used by the Anglo-Saxons, had a lot of evolution take place over time.

One rune will split into multiple different forms when that one rune begins to take on new sounds. When new distinctions within the sound become more apparent and meaningful, a new rune will be made. At such a point, you have two (or more) runes in the “set”.

The most interesting thing about this is that the oldest, original rune in the set doesn’t keep the oldest, original sound.

/g/ and /j/

An example of this is when the ᚷ rune used to primarily make a “g” sound like in the word “gift”. Secondarily, it made a “y” sound like in the word “yell” or “yule”.

So over time, we had a scenario like the above where one rune took on new sounds and the two sounds became more and more distinct. Some rune masters (whoever they were), then made a new ᚸ rune for one of these sounds.

Now any person would naturally assume that a new rune would get assigned the new sound (the “y” sound in this case). But no, the new rune got the older sound (the “g” sound).

The same thing happened to ᚳ and ᛣ. The primary sound of ᚳ was “c” as in “cat” and secondarily “ch” as in “chat”. The new rune ᛣ was made and it got the old sound of “cat”.

Laws of Analogy

Why is this the case? I was pointed to a man named Jerzy Kuryłowicz and his Laws of Analogy that he developed in regards to how analogical grammatical changes work in Indo-European languages.

The laws are as follows:

  1. A bipartite marker tends to replace an isofunctional simple marker.
  2. The directionality of analogy is from a “basic” form to a “subordinate” form with respect to their spheres of usage.
  3. A structure consisting of a basic and a subordinate member serves as a foundation for a basic member which is isofunctional but isolated.
  4. When the old (non-analogical) form and the new (analogical) form are both in use, the former remains in secondary function and the latter takes the basic function.
  5. A more marginal distinction is eliminated for the benefit of a more significant distinction.
  6. A base in analogy may belong to a prestige dialect affecting the form of a dialect imitating it.

In simpler English (thanks to ChatGPT v4):

  1. A two-part grammatical marker (like “will have” for future perfect tense in English) often replaces a one-part marker that does the same job (if it existed).
  2. Changes in grammar tend to spread from the more commonly used form to the less commonly used form. For example, a common word might influence the form of a less common word.
  3. A grammatical structure that has a main part and a secondary part can lead to changes in another similar but standalone structure. For example, a verb form that usually comes with an auxiliary verb might influence a similar verb form that doesn’t use an auxiliary.
  4. When both the old and the new versions of a word or grammatical form are used, the old one gets a less important role, and the new one becomes the main version. For example, “dove” as a past tense of “dive” became more common than the older “dived.”
  5. Less important grammatical differences tend to disappear in favor of more important ones. For example, minor pronunciation differences in word endings might be dropped to keep more important grammatical distinctions clear.
  6. The way people speak in a prestigious or standard dialect can influence how people speak in other dialects. For example, regional dialects might adopt grammatical forms from the standard language used in formal settings.

These laws are related to grammar, but if they successfully describe grammar, the chances are high that they can be pretty well abstracted to other things as well. (without getting too off-topic, I would say that life itself is grammar.)

For example, runes evolved exactly as law number 4 says they would. The older form (ᚷ and ᚳ) remained in secondary function and the newer form (ᚸ and ᛣ) took the basic function.

Application to Rune School

Now lets go through the laws and see how they might apply to our thinking about the Rune School system in other ways.

A two-part marker tends to replace a one-part simple marker.

In English with Latin letters, we have a number of ways to spell the GOAT vowel. In some words, they just use a single “o” letter for this sound. Eg. “no”, “so”, “go”

There are also words that use two letters like “ow” for this sound. Eg. “row”, “mow”

Rune School uses the two-part marker for this GOAT vowel ᚩᚹ which then replaces any one-part marker. Seemingly, humans just prefer composability and that is why things will trend towards being composable if at all possible.

The directionality of analogy is from a “basic” form to a “subordinate” form with respect to their spheres of usage.

As mentioned, we use the form ᚩᚹ for the GOAT vowel, which is basically “ow” in English with Latin letters. This is like the words “show”, “snow”, “bowl”, “low”, “grow”, “flow”.

We could then say that these very common “ow” words influence the less common words. So we use an “ow” form (ᚩᚹ) for all similar vowel sounds. The “ow” form has replaced the less common “-ough”, “-ew”, “-eau” words.

A structure consisting of a basic and a subordinate member serves as a foundation for a basic member which is isofunctional but isolated.

By making heavier use of two-part rune combinations, the Rune School system helps to reinforce the understanding of individual runes.

For example, by using ᚫᛡ for the sound in “price”, we are creating a more robust foundation for the individual ᚫ rune. If you pronounce “price” like [æi̯], [ai̯], or [ɑi̯], you then learn that ᚫ could sound like [æ], [a], or [ɑ]. This is important because in a phonemic system, individual letters need to feel a bit malleable in that way.

When the old (non-analogical) form and the new (analogical) form are both in use, the former remains in secondary function and the latter takes the basic function.

English used to have a main “u” sound which was like the word “goose”. Then this sound shortened to be like “foot”, at which point we had two sounds in the “u” category. Then the “foot” sound split into both “foot” and “strut”.

The idea is that the ᚢ rune used to have the “goose” and “foot” sounds and then when the sound split into “strut”, the newer ᚣ rune took on the older sound. So ᚢ is then reserved for the secondary function of “strut” (even if “strut” is quite a common sound in modern English).

Similarly, in Rune School we use ᚷ for the J sound in “joke”. It’s no secret that in English the “soft j” sound like in “yule” slowly became a “hard j” like in “John”. So as ᚷ changed (yet again), the newer rune ᛡ took on the older sound. So ᚷ is reserved for the secondary function of “Jello” while ᛡ has the primary function of “yellow”.

So ᚢ and ᚷ follow the same pattern of ᚫ and ᚳ.

A more marginal distinction is eliminated for the benefit of a more significant distinction.

In the standard Rune School system, we follow Shavian’s lead in eliminating as much as possible the distinctions in sound that just don’t matter all that much. The benefit of this is that comprehension becomes easier

For example, we only have 7 rows in our vowel chart.

Rune School Lexical Sets

We could have added another row specifically for ᚪ (/ɑ/-ish sounds), but by doing so, the distinctions between sounds become smaller. So instead, we make ᚪ a shortcut for writing ᚫᚫ.

We eliminate the more marginal distinction between ᚫ and ᚪ for the benefit of a more significant distinction between ᚫ and ᚩ.

The way people speak in a prestigious or standard dialect can influence how people speak in other dialects. For example, regional dialects might adopt grammatical forms from the standard language used in formal settings.

It’s no secret that Rune School uses a somewhat “fancy” pronunciation for a standard. It follows Shavian’s lead in this regard.

But according to this law, this is probably a good thing, seeing that the “prestige” dialect tends to influence the others.

What do you think? Let us know.

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