This article seeks to identify the phonetic correspondence(s) of the digraph <cg> in Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME), assessing a range of sources: the etyma in early Germanic (Gmc) languages, the various spellings in OE and the spelling evidence in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English. Almost all the textbooks on OE claim that <cg> was pronounced /dʒ/, i.e. as a phonemic affricate, in OE. Evidence is thin on the ground, and the argument rests on certain back spellings <cg> for words with etymological <d+g>, e.g. midgern <micgern>. Words with <cg> in OE go back to Gmc *g(g)j, which subsequently underwent palatalisation, and eventually assibilation and affrication. This article argues that the value [ɟj] is more likely for OE and early ME, and that such an interpretation agrees with the available spelling evidence for both OE and ME, in that there is not one <d>-type spelling in the entire historical corpus until late ME. It is also argued that the development of the voiced (pre-)affricate was later than that of its voiceless counterpart, as voiced fricative phonemes are a late, and infrequent, development in Gmc. Moreover, it is likely that the development of /dʒ/ was affected by the high number of French loans with /dʒ/ which entered the English lexicon after 1066. Thus, the English system of consonant phonemes may not have acquired /dʒ/ until the thirteenth century at the earliest.

中文翻译：

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古英语及其在古英语和中古英语中的发音对应

本文旨在确定古英语 (OE) 和中古英语 (ME) 中二合字母 <cg> 的语音对应，评估一系列来源：早期日耳曼语 (Gmc) 语言中的词根，各种拼写OE 和拼写证据早期中古英语语言地图集. 几乎所有关于 OE 的教科书都声称 <cg> 在 OE 中发音为 /dʒ/，即作为音位塞擦音。证据不足，论据依赖于词源 <d+g> 的单词的某些反向拼写 <cg>，例如中产<麦克恩>。OE 中带有 <cg> 的单词返回 Gmc*g(g)j，随后经历了颚化，最终被同化和擦擦。本文认为 [ɟj] 值更可能用于 OE 和早期 ME，并且这种解释与 OE 和 ME 的可用拼写证据一致，因为在整个过程中不存在一个 <d> 类型的拼写直到我晚期的历史语料库。也有人认为浊（前）塞塞音的发展晚于其清音对应物，因为浊擦音在 Gmc 中是一种较晚且不常见的发展。此外，/dʒ/ 的发展很可能受到了 1066 年之后进入英语词典的大量法语借词 /dʒ/ 的影响。因此，英语的辅音音位系统可能直到最早是十三世纪。