The spelling conventions for dental fricatives in Anglic languages (Scots and English) have a rich and complex history. However, the various – often competing – graphemic representations (<þ>, <ð>, <y> and <th>, among others) eventually settled on one digraph, <th>, for all contemporary varieties, irrespective of the phonemic distinction between /ð/ and /θ/. This single representation is odd among the languages’ fricatives, which tend to use contrasting graphemes (cf. <f> vs <v> and <s> vs <z>) to represent contrastive voicing, a sound pattern that emerged nearly a millennium ago. Close examinations of the scribal practices for English in the late medieval period, however, have shown that northern texts had begun to develop precisely this type of distinction for dental fricatives as well. Here /ð/ was predominantly represented by <y> and /θ/ by <th> (Jordan 1925; Benskin 1982). In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this ‘Northern System’ collapsed, due to the northward spread of a London-based convention using exclusively <th> (Stenroos 2004). This article uses a rich body of corpus evidence for fifteenth-century Scots to show that, north of the North, the phonemic distinction was more clearly mirrored by spelling conventions than in any contemporary variety of English. Indeed, our data for Older Scots local documents (1375–1500) show a pattern where <y> progressively spreads into voiced contexts, while <th> recedes into voiceless ones. This system is traced back to the Old English positional preferences for <þ> and <ð> via subsequent changes in phonology, graphemic repertoire and letter shapes. An independent medieval Scots spelling norm is seen to emerge as part of a developing, proto-standard orthographic system, only to be cut short in the sixteenth century by top-down anglicisation processes.

中文翻译：

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Phonotactics，graphotactics and contrast：苏格兰牙擦音拼写的历史

英语（苏格兰语和英语）中齿擦音的拼写约定有着丰富而复杂的历史。然而，对于所有当代变体，各种（通常是相互竞争的）字形表示（<þ>、<ð>、<y> 和 <th> 等）最终确定了一个有向图，<th>，无论音位区别如何/ð/和/θ/之间。这种单一表示在语言的擦音中很奇怪，它倾向于使用对比字形（参见 <f> vs <v> 和 <s> vs <z>）来表示对比发音，这是一种近千年前出现的声音模式. 然而，对中世纪晚期英语抄写实践的仔细研究表明，北方文本也开始发展出这种对牙擦音的区分。这里 /ð/ 主要由 <y> 表示，/θ/ 由 <th> 表示（Jordan 1925; Benskin 1982）。在 15 世纪末和 16 世纪初，这个“北方系统”崩溃了，原因是一个以伦敦为基地的公约向北传播，只使用 <th>（Stenroos 2004）。本文使用 15 世纪苏格兰语的丰富语料库证据表明，在北方以北，拼写惯例比任何当代英语更清楚地反映了音位区别。事实上，我们对老年苏格兰本地文档（1375-1500）的数据显示了一种模式，其中 <y> 逐渐扩散到浊音上下文中，而 <th> 后退到清音上下文中。该系统通过随后的音系变化可以追溯到古英语对 <þ> 和 <ð> 的位置偏好，字形曲目和字母形状。一个独立的中世纪苏格兰拼写规范被认为是作为发展中的原始标准拼写系统的一部分出现的，只是在十六世纪被自上而下的英语化过程缩短了。