2. Origin of Old English vowels. Changes of stressed vowels in
Early Old English. Independent changes. Development of
monophthongs. Development of diphthongs. Assimilative vowel
changes: breaking and diphthongisation. Palatal mutation.
Changes of unstressed vowels in Early Old English. Old English
vowel system (9th-10th c.)
3. Origin of Old English consonants. Consonant changes in
pre-written Periods. Treatment of fricatives. Hardening.
Rhotacism. Voicing and devoicing. West Germanic gemination of
consonants. Velar consonants in Early Old English. Growth of
new phonemes. Loss of consonants in some positions. Old
English consonant system.
OE is so far removed from Mod E that one may take it for an entirely different language; this is largely, due to the peculiarities of its pronunciation.
The survey of OE phonetics deals with word accentuation, the systems of vowels and consonants and their origins. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. It underwent multiple changes in the pre-written periods of history, especially in Early OE. The diachronic description of phonetics in those early periods will show the specifically English tendencies of development and the immediate sources of the sounds in the age of writing.
Word Stress
The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes in Early OE.
In OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation; in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed.
In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either. Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had two stresses, chief and secondary, the chief stress being fixed on the first root-morpheme, e.g. the compound noun Norðmonna from the same extract, received the chief stress upon its first component and the secondary stress on the second component; the grammatical ending -a (Gen. pl) was unaccented. In words with prefixes the position of the stress varied: verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix. Cf.:
If the words were derived from the same root, word stress, together with other means, served to distinguish the noun from the verb, cf.:
ORIGIN OF OLD ENGLISH VOWELS
Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English
Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took place in English at every period of history.
The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels.
It should be borne in mind that the mechanism of all phonetic changes strictly conforms with the general pattern. The change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the "empty boxes" of the system or introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together. Most frequently the change will involve both types of replacement, splitting and merging, so that we have to deal both with the rise of new phonemes and with the redistribution of new allophones among the existing phonemes. For the sake of brevity, the description of most changes below is restricted to the initial and final stages.