Die Entwicklung von protogermanisch *ai im Niederdeutschen Ein Erklärungsversuch für die Spaltung des altsächsischen ē²

The twofold development in Old Frisian of Proto-Germanic *ai into ā and ē contrasts with the nearly uniform rendering as in Old Saxon. It has, however, been pointed out that this Old Saxon ē², spelled , shows a phonemic split in the modern Low German dialects, whose origin may go back to the period of monophthongization of *ai. The hypothesis was formulated that this split may have run along similar lines as the one in Old Frisian, bringing the development of Frisian and Saxon much closer together. Scrutiny of 20th-century attestations of Low German words with PGmc. *ai indicates that the split in Old Saxon primarily followed the same conditioning as the split between ei and ē in Old High German. However, incidental lexemes and instances of shortening show a closer proximity to Frisian, constituting a continuum from Frisian to High German with respect to this development.