De oergong rd>z en rt>ts tyn it Skiermûntseagersk

Abstract

The Frisian dialect of the Wadden Sea island of Schiermonnikoog (Frisian: Skiermûntseach) displays a rather curious sound change. In this dialect, the consonant clusters rt and rd are converted to ts and z, respectively. So, for instance, mainland Frisian hurde herten (English ‘hard hearts’) appears as hezze hetsen in the island dialect. This phenomenon even affected the weak verbs of class I that have a stem ending in r, in cases where the suffixes -de or -d of the preterite or past participle were added; compare mainland hierde ‘rented’ to Schiermonnikoog hieze. Over time, the data have been explained in two different ways. Halbertsma’s suggestion, that the fricative z developed from Old Frisian th, is clearly untenable. A later but more serious proposal takes as its starting point the general Frisian weakening of r before dentals and assumes that, 
for Schiermonnikoog, this resulted in palatalisation of t and d and subsequent assibilation. However, as is demonstrated here, this line of reasoning has some disadvantages. As an alternative I propose that in the deletion of r, its feature [+ continuant] has been retained. This feature turned the stops t and d into affricates. This explanation gives a much better account for the resulting distribution of the consonants. Only about a half of the potential input forms has been affected by the sound change. An important exception are the aforementioned class I weak verbs that have a stem ending in r, when combined with the suffix -t of the third person singular of the present tense. So, on the mainland we have the form hiert, but there is no corresponding form *hiets from Schiermonnikoog. For these exceptions, different kinds of explanations are provided, both formal and functional.