On maintaining and extending contrasts: notker's anlautgesetz

Native speakers deal with their phonological system without any knowledge of a lost contrast. To avoid neutralisations, speakers can only make use of their present phonological system of contrasts. Speakers of Old Alemannic (the dialect of Notker der Deutsche) had no contrast in voicing or fortis/lenis after the Second Consonant Shift had reduced the pre‐OHG voiceless stops to fricatives and affricates. They had instead a quantity contrast, which they utilised to distinguish between an old coronal stop and a new one developed from *þ, thereby introducing a word‐initial contrast only in coronal stops. This contrast was again later extended to other places of articulation through generations while adapting loans from donor languages which had a contrast in voicing. No new contrast was added due to loans. As a result, modern Alemannic dialects such as Thurgovian have a quantity contrast in stops in all positions of a word.