The rise and fall and rise of the digraph ⟨oa⟩ in English

The present paper examines the history of the digraph < oa & rang; in English: it is relatively rare in OE and early ME, falls out of use in late ME, and reappears in the late fifteenth century. Different lexemes have been spelt with < oa & rang; in the different language periods, but in the majority of cases, the vowel so represented is the reflex of early ME /LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O:/ or OE o in an open syllable; hence, the digraph is clearly phonetically conditioned. The paper also investigates the graphotactic constraints on the orthographic variants < oa & rang;, < oCe & rang;, < oe & rang;.