Old Saxon Vowel Insertion

Old Saxon shows sporadic vowel insertions, a phenomenon whereby a vowel is inserted into heterorganic post-nucleic liquid–consonant sequences. The process is highly variable, and differences occur within and across manuscripts and lemmas. Moreover, the phenomenon is under-researched and has hitherto been analyzed as a mechanism to dissolve challenging liquid–consonant clusters by causing resyllabification of the liquid. This article provides a corpus-based analysis of the Old Saxon vowel insertions to establish the most detailed investigation of the process thus far. The findings suggest that the Old Saxon phenomenon is an instance of vowel intrusion rather than phonological vowel epenthesis. *