The Development of Vowel System in Middle English and New English

Lecture 10

Phonetic Features of Old English

Plan:

1. OE Word Stress/Accent

2. OE Vowels

3. OE Consonants

OE sound system developed from PG sound system.

I. OE Word Stress/Accent:

1. fixed (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);

2. dynamic(force, breath stress);

3.in Noun and Adjectivestress was mainly on the prefixif there was one:

E.g. ‘misdæd (misdeed), ‘uðƷenƷ (escape), ‘oreald (very old)

in Verbstress was mainly on the root even if there was a prefix:

E.g. a’risan (arise), mis’faran (go astray)

4.stress served to distinguish Noun from Verb (and still does):

E.g. ‘andswaru (N answer) – and’swarian (V answer)

‘onƷin (N beginning) – on’Ʒinnan (V begin)

E.g. (modern English) – ‘present – pre’sent; ‘ally – al’ly.

II. OE Vowels

Unstressed vowelswere weakened and dropped.

Stressed vowelsunderwent some changes:

· splitting – 1 phoneme split into several allophones which later become separate phonemes

e.g. à a

a à ã

à æ

· merging– separate phonemes become allophones of one phoneme and then disappear and are not distinguished any more as separate phonemes

e.g. a à

ã à a

æ à

Rise of Diphthongs

In PG there were no diphthongs. There was just a sequence of two separate vowels. Diphthongs appeared in OE: some (usually long diphthongs) – as a result of merging of two vowels:

others (usually short diphthongs) – as a result of the influence of the succeeding and preceding consonants (breaking of [æ, e]):

Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation –a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation(or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c.and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic (that’s why later it will be used for comparison).

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

· [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;

· new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);

2. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);

3. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).

OE Vowel System(symmetrical, i.e each short vowel had its long variant)

The length of vowels was phonologically relevant (i.e. served to distinguish words):

e.g. (OE) is (is) – īs (ice); col (coal) –cōl (cool); god (god) – gōd (good), etc.

III. OE Consonants

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1. Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

2. Voicing(the process when a voiceless consonant becomes voiced in certain positions) – intervocally and between a vowel and a voiced consonant or sonorant

[f, q, h, s] à [v, ð, g, z] e.g. wulfos (Gothic) – wulf[v]as (OE) (wolves)

3. Rhotacism(a process when [z] turns into [r])

e.g. maiza (Gothic) – māra (OE) (more)

4. Gemination(a process of doubling a consonant) – after a short vowel, usually happened as a result of palatal mutation (e.g. fullan (OE) (fill), settan (OE) (set), etc.).

5. Palatalisation of Consonants(a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel

[g, γ, k, h] à [g’, γ’, k’, h’]e.g. c[k’]ild (OE) (child); ecζ[gg’] (OE) (edge), etc.

Lecture 11

The Development of Vowel System in Middle English and New English

Plan:

1. Word Stress/Accent

2. Vowels. Middle English

3. Vowels. New English

I. Word Stress/Accent:

In ME and NE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation.

Recessive tendency –stress in loan-words moved closer to the beginning of the word (e.g. in French words the stress is usually placed on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable, but the stress in the words of the French origin that penetrated into English has moved to the beginning of the word).

E.g. ME vertu [ver’tju:] – NE virtue [‘vз:t∫ə]

Rhythmic tendency – regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables (3 or more) that creates rhythm and has led to the appearance of the secondary stress.

E.g. ME diso’beien – NE ,diso’bei

II. Vowels

English vowels proved to be more changeable than consonants. Long vowels proved to be more changeable than short ones.

Middle English

The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows:

1. Quantitative:

Reduction –weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. As far as the stress was mainly on the root the vowels in prefixes and suffixes got weak and underwent reduction. In unstressed position only two vowels were left – [ə] and [i]. They had never been contrasted.

E.g. ME tale [‘ta:lə], body [‘bodi]

In NE sound [ə] (schwa) was dropped at the end of the words but the letter e was left in spelling to show the length of the preceding vowel.

Shortening –all long vowels became short before consonant clusters (NB!! except [ld, nd, mb] –before these clusters vowels remained long or if a vowel was short it became long)

E.g.

Lengthening (12^th – 13^th c.) –short vowels became long:

· before clusters [ld, nd, mb];

· in 2-syllable words, only to [e, o, a]in open stressed syllable

E.g.

2. Qualitative:

The system of vowels in ME were no longer symmetrical as it was in OE

Short Vowels

· [y]changed to [i]e.g. OE hyll – ME hill (hill);

· [æ]changed to [a]e.g. OE wæs – ME was (was).

As a result:

Long Vowels

· [ỹ]changed to [ī];

· [ǽ]fell together with [έ];

· [ā]changed to [ō]e.g. OE stān – ME sto[o:]ne(stone).

As a result:

New Diphthongs

OE diphthongs turned into monophthongs:

New diphthongs appeared due to vocalisation of [j], [γ]and [w]. These consonants turned into vowels ([i], [u]and [u] respectively) and became the glides of the new diphthongs:

III. New English

Great Vowel Shift – the change that happened in the 14^th – 16^th c.and affected all long monophthongs + diphthong [au]. As a result these vowels were:

· diphthongized;

· narrowed (became more closed);

· both diphthongized and narrowed.

This shift was not followed by spelling changes, i.e. it was not reflected in written form. Thus the Great Vowel Shift explains many modern rules of reading.

Short Vowels

There were exceptions though, e.g. put, pull, etc.

Vocalisation of [r]

It occurred in the 16^th – 17^th c. Sound [r] became vocalised (changed to [ə] (schwa)) when stood after vowels at the end of the word.

Consequences:

· new diphthongs appeared: [εə], [iə], [uə];

· the vowels before [r] were lengthened (e.g. arm [a:m], for [fo:], etc.);

· triphthongs appeared: [aiə], [auə] (e.g. shower [‘∫auə], shire [‘∫aiə]).

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 3573