Abstract
The lexicon of English contains a number of words which developed emergent stops, mostly p, b, t, d. Some of these words have functioned as variants of forms without such stops (cf.
OE endleofan ~ enlefan or gandra ~ ganra) but in most cases they prevail in Present-day English, as exemplified by OE nimol > ModE nimble, OE æmtig > ModE empty. The present study examines the process of labial stop epenthesis from the perspective of diachrony and diatopy.
I searched for the words containing emergent labial stops in the texts collected in historical English corpora to identify their uses with and without parasitic consonants. This made it possible to establish a precise chronology of the process, which was at work from Old to Modern English, and the context in which such stops appeared.