QUANTITATIVE VOWEL CHANGES 1N EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH

At the end of OE vowels underwent a number of quantitative changes which affected the employment and the phonological status of short and long vowels in the language. In OE quantity was the main basis of correlation in the vowel system: short vowels were phonemically opposed to long ones, roughly identical in quality. At that time vowel length an inherited feature: OE short vowels had developed from PG short vowels, while long ones went back to long vowels or bi-phonemic vowel sequences. In later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions.

The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters. (l) Short vowels were lengthened before two homorganic consonants, a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild>ME wild [wi:ld ]. (2) All other groups of two or more consonants made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OE cepte>ME kepte ['kepta]. (3) Short vowels became long in open syllables. This lengthening mainly affected the more open of the short vowels [e], [a] and [o], but sometimes, though very seldom, it is also found in the close vowels, [i] and [u]. In the process of lengthening close vowels acquired a more open quality, e.g., OE open>ME open [o:]. In spite of some restrictions (e.g. no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodi; >ME body ('bodi ] (NE body), the alteration affected many words. The changes of vowel quantity reduced the number of positions in which the opposition of long vowels to short ones could be used for phonemic contrast. Before a consonant cluster vowel quantity was now predetermined by the nature of the cluster; and in open syllables three vowels [o:], [a:], [Ë] were always long. Consequently, opposition through quantity could be used for distinction, as a phonological feature, only in the absence of those phonetic conditions, namely: in closed syllables, in polysyllabic words, or with the vowels [i ] and [u] in open syllables. Such is the contrast, e.g. in ME risen ['ri:zan ] inf. and risen ['rizan] Part. II (NE rise, risen). The limitations in the application of vowel length as a distinctive feature undermined the role of vowel quantity in the language.

21. Verner’s law. Rhotacism

Not all correspondence stated in Grimm’s law are equal. In some cases in G/L we find consonants which do not fit into Grimm’s Law (pater - fadar). Explanation of this exception was offered by the Danish scholar Karl Verner. His low adds fallowing addition to the Grimm’s law. If an I/E voiceless stop was preceded by an unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricatives which developed from it an accordance with Grimm’s low, became voiced, and later this voiced fricative became a voiced stop

Unstressed vowel+voiceless stop  voiceless fricative  voiced fricative voiced stop /t/  /þ/  /ð/  /d/ In the Gr word patěr the voiceless stop /t/ was preceded by an unstressed root vowel. Under these conditions the voiceless fricative /þ/ which had developed from it in accordance with the 1^st consonant shift became a voiced fricative /ð/ and finally it developed into the voiced stop /d/, i.e. Lat patěr OE fæder /k/  /h/  /ɣ/ /g/ Besides that there is one more change under Verner’s low (s-z) In some cases s  r . In West-Germanic and N-G languages according to the linguistic phenomenon rhotasism (подчеркнутое произношение r) s  r.

22. ME vowels: Qualitative changes

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1249