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Compensatory lengthening in phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 and historical linguistics
Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
 is the lengthening of a vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant
Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
, usually in the syllable coda
Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the syllable nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a syllable rime....
. This may be considered an extreme form of fusion
Fusion (phonetics)

In phonetics and historical linguistics, fusion is the merger of the Distinctive feature of two Segment into one.A common form of fusion is found in the development of nasal vowels, which frequently become phonemic when final nasal consonants are lost from a language....
 (Crowley 1997:46).

An example from the history of English
History of the English language

English language is a West Germanic languages which originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Germanic tribes from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands....
 is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless palatal fricative
Voiceless palatal fricative

The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C....
  and its allophone
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
  were lost. For example, in Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
's time the word night was pronounced ; later the was lost, but the was lengthened to to compensate.






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Compensatory lengthening in phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 and historical linguistics
Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
 is the lengthening of a vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant
Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
, usually in the syllable coda
Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the syllable nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a syllable rime....
. This may be considered an extreme form of fusion
Fusion (phonetics)

In phonetics and historical linguistics, fusion is the merger of the Distinctive feature of two Segment into one.A common form of fusion is found in the development of nasal vowels, which frequently become phonemic when final nasal consonants are lost from a language....
 (Crowley 1997:46).

An example from the history of English
History of the English language

English language is a West Germanic languages which originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Germanic tribes from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands....
 is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless palatal fricative
Voiceless palatal fricative

The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C....
  and its allophone
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
  were lost. For example, in Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
's time the word night was pronounced ; later the was lost, but the was lengthened to to compensate. (Later the became by the Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600....
.)

Both the Germanic spirant law
Germanic spirant law

In linguistics, the Germanic spirant law or Prim?rber?hrung is a specific historical instance of assimilation which occurred at an early stage in the history of the Germanic languages and is regarded by some as being early enough to fall into the same general context as Grimm's law and Verner's law....
 and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law

In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law is a description of a phonological development in some dialects of West Germanic, which is attested in Old English language, Old Frisian language, and Old Saxon language....
 show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal.

Non-rhotic forms of English have a lengthened vowel before a historical post-vocalic */r/: in Scottish English, girl has a short /i/ followed by a light alveolar /r/, as presumably it did in Middle English; in Southern British English, the */r/ has dropped out of the spoken form and the vowel has become a "long schwa".