6. Contraction

When H was placed between 2 vowels the following changes occurred:

ah+vowel = e_ slahan – slean (slay)

eh+vowel – e-o – sehen – seon

IH+vowel – eo tihan – teon – accuee;

OH + vowel – O_ hohan – h_on.

7. Lengthening of Vowels.

Before the clusters – ND, LD, MB

bindan bi_ndan; cild – ci_ld; wild – wi_ld, climban. If the cluster was followed by another consonant, lengthening did not take place cildru.

The system of consonants. Its changes.The OE consonant system consists of the following sounds: labial; dental, velar. The letter X is used instead of the group CS.

1. Voicing of fricatives in intervocal position.

f=v ofer, wi_f ǿ = ð, o_ther, rathe

s= z = R (rhotacism)wesun = weren; maiza – ma_ra.

2. Palatalisation of the sounds K, SK, KG developed in assibilation, that is formation of a sibilant in places before front vowels.

k’ = tч cild; ceosan =choose; hwilc (which)

sk’ = ш sceal, sceotan – shoot; sceort – short

kg’ = dж brycg; hrycg (ridge); wecg (wedge)

Back γ sound before palatal consonants turned into j – gear.

3. Assimilation before T. The sound T when it was preceded by a number of consonants changed the quality of a preceding sound.

velar + T = HT se_can = sohte (seek – sought);

labial + T = FT gesceapan – geaseft (creature)

dental + T = ss – witan – wisse (know)

fn = mn stefn = stemn = voice;

fm = mm = wifman – wimman

dð = t bindð = bint (binds)

4. Loss of consonants in certain positions.

The sounds N and m were lost before H, entailing the lengthening of the preceding vowel:bronhte = bro_hte fimf = fi_f;

G was lost before D and N:

maegden – mae_den

saegde sae_de

5. Metathesis of R.

In several words the following changes of the position of consonants take place:

cons + R = vowel = cons + vowel + R

ðridda – ðirda (third)

6. West Germanic germination of consonants.

In the process of palatal mutation when J was lost and the preceding vowel was short, the consonant after it was doubled (geminated):

fullian – fylla (fill)

Thus all OE phonetic changes appear to be due to one common principle, that of assimilation.

12. Word-stress. Its development through periods

It is known that in ancient IE, prior to the separation of Germanic, there existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means that it could fall on any syllable of the word – a root-morpheme, an affix or an ending – and could be shifted both in form-building and word-building. Both these properties of the word accent were changed in PG. Force and expiratory stress became the only type of stress used. In Early PG word stress was still as movable as in ancient IE but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilized. The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables – suffixes and endings – were unstressed. The stress could no longer move either in form-building or word-building.

13. Oe Vowels

The first English used the runes (24 in German, 30 in England). The Latin alphabet was carried by the Roman Catholic church to the Anglo-Saxons in the 7th c.

Vowels: 7-8 short 6-7long They differed the meaning. There were 4 diphthongs

The most common changes

1. Breaking (fracture). (r+cons; l+cons; h+cons);

A + r+cons; l+cons = ea; - hard – heard; arm – earm; half – healf; ahta – eahta; nah – neah;

æ + h+cons = ea; - uyj

e + h final = eo – erl – eorl; melcan – meolcan (milk), feh – feoh (fee).