17. The oe consonant system. Grimm’s & Verner’s Laws, treatment of fricatives.

All the consonants fell into noise & consonants and sonorant. The noise c-ts were subdivided into plosive & fricative; plosives were subdivided into voiced & voiceless, the difference being phonemic. Fricative were also subdivided but sonority wasa phonetic difference between allophones. (bin –pin the dif-ce in sonority is phonemically relevant; hlāf – hlāford where the dif-ce is positional). Back fricatives:

1. voiced: [x] – velar;

2. voiceless: [x’] – palatalized. Eg: [nix’t] → niht → night.

The most universal distinctive feature in the cons-t system was the dif-ce in length. Long cons-t have been opposed to short ones on a phonemic level; they were mostly distinguished in intervocal position (sticca – Gen. case pl. of stice )

Grimm’s law: The first Germanic consonant shifts took place in the V-II cent. BC. Jacobs Grimm’s Law. According to Grimm, he classified consonant correspondences between indoeuropean and germanic languages.

There are 3 acts of this law:

1. IE plosive (stops) p, t, k correspond to G voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h. Eg: пламя – flame, пена – foam, колода – holt, cordis – heort.

2. IE voiced plosives b, d, g, →G voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: яблоко - apple, дерево – tree, ego(lat) – ic (OE).

3. IE aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh →to voiced plosives without aspiration. Eg: bhrāta(sanscr.) – bropor (OE) - brother, rudhira Lat – read (OE) - red, ghostis – giest (OE - )guest.

The second consonant shift was Carl Verner’s law. According to C.Verner all the common Germanic consonants became voiced in intervocalic position if the preceding vowel was unstressed.

[p,t,k]→[f,θ,h]→[v,Ә/ d,g]→septem-seofon-seven

Pater-fæder-father

Devoicing took place in early common germanic when the stress was not yet fixed on the root.

A variety of Verner’s law is rhotacism (greek letter rho). [s] →[z]→[r] we find traces of this phenomenon in form of the verb to be →was – were, is – are; ausis(Lat) –auso(Goth) - ēare (rhotasism)

II consonant shift (9^th c) occurred in dialects of southern germanic. T-ts/s; θ-d; d-t; k-h

Eg: еда – eat – essen, вода – water – wasser, hope – hoffen, bed – bett.

Ch (G) → C (OE) : reich – ricostan.

18. Major consonant changes in the history of English.

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1)Hardening (the process when the soft cons becomes harder) – usual initially and after nasals [m,n] (ð-d, v-b, j-g)

2)Voicing (the proc. When a voiceless cons becomes voiced in certain position):- intervocally, - between a vowel and a voiced cons. and sonorant. [f,θ,h,s – v,ð,g,z]

3) Rhotacism (a pr. When [z] turns into [r] maize Goth – mara OE (more))

4) Gemination (a pr. Of doubling a consonant after a short vowel (as a result of palatal mutation)) settan OE – set, fullan – fill

5) Palatalization of consonants (a pr. when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes after a front vowels [d,j,k,h – g’,j’,k’,h’]

6) Loss of consonants: The loss of nasals before fricatives:

Eg: fimf (OE)> fif (five); loss of [j] as a result of palatal mutation; fricatives between vowels and some plosives;

ME & NE

New sets of cons-s:

-sibilants (a type of fricatives narrower and sharper than others) [f,v,h,θ,ð]-[s,z,S,?]

-affricates (sounds consisting of a plosive immediately followed by a fricative) [tS, d?]

ME – new cons-s from palatal plosives [k’,g’] – [tS, d?] and the cluster [sk’] – [S]

NE – Palatalisation – as a result of reduction of unstressed vowels several consonants merged into one: sj-[S], zj-[?], tj-[tS], dj-[d?]; exeptions: mature, duty, due, suit…

Allophones – if 2 sounds don’t occur in the same position:

Eg: second – risan – læs

furst – ofor - wif

The most important changes: simplification of initial, mid and final clusters (early NE):

1. initial: Eg: k – know; wr – write; g – gnat;

2. mid: sth – listen; stl – whistle;

3. final: mb – climb; mn – autumn;

[r] was vocalized in the 17^th cent. Eg: far, bird. Gave birth to diphthongs and triphthongs