12. Consonant changes in the history of English

Many remained unchanged up to nowadays. There are all sonorants apart from [r]. Also [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g] were unchanged.

1) THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIBILANTS & AFFRICTES.

In OE they didn’t exist. In ME they developed from palatal cons-s [k’], [g’] & cons. cluster [st]:

[k’] – [t∫] tǽcan (OE) → tēchen (ME)

[g’] – [dз] ecзe (OE) → edge (ME)

[sk] – [∫] fisc → fish

Another source of affricates was closely connected with French borrowings: charme [t∫a:rmə]

There were a lot of French words with the stress on the second syllable: na’cioun – nation

As they come to the E lan-ge the stress was moved to the first syllable & unstressed combinations were reduced which sometimes caused the fusion of several con-ts into one sound.

Sj → ∫; zj → з; tj → t∫; dj → dз (condition, nature) This process isn’t fully completed, that’s why we have 2 variants of some words (issue [isju]; [i∫ju])

Fricatives

In OE sounds [s],[z],[f],[v],[Ө],[ð] were considered to be variants of the same phoneme. In ME these variants acquired the status of independent phonemes.

Loss of consonants:

In OE loss of consonants normally took place when the nasal sonorants precede the fricative consonants, the sonorants were lost (e.g. fimf (Gothic) – fīf (OE) (five));

In certain consonant combination in ME we observe the loss of [k], [g] (knowledge, gnat). Similarly in the combination [mb] (climb, dumb)

VOCALIZATION OF R in NE

In OE [r] was rolled. In ME practically in all positions it acquires the quality of the sonorant. Consequences:

1. new diphthongs appeared: [εə], [iə], [uə];

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

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

4. a new vowel appears in the phonetic system [з:] (girl, bird)

9. The oe sound system. Vowel and consonant changes in Old English.

OE vowel system was symmetrical: each short vowel had its long correspondent:

Short: [ĭ, ĕ, æﬞ , ŭ, ŏ, ă] Long: [ī, ē, æ‾, ū, ō, ā]

Before this system of sound the vowels at very early stage of development had undergone certain processes:

BREAKING is a process which led to the split of the short front vowels æﬞ , e into diphthongs.

Early OE OE E.g.

Before:

r + other cons. ǽ → ea ærm → earm

(arm)

l + other cons. ē → eo melcan → meolkan (milk)

h+ other cons.

I-MUTATION took place in all Germanic languages in VI – VII cent, except Gothic. It is a case of regressive assimilation with –i- or semivowel ‘j’. Eg: kuning – cyning (король), fuljan – fūllan (fill – full), saljan – sellan (sell). The suffix j wasn’t preserved, only the mutated root vowel remained. We find traces of i-mutation in NE, especially in irregular plurals: foot – feet, goose – geese; in irregular verbs and adjectives: tell – told, old – elder; in word formation with sound interchange: blood – bleed. After i-mutation we could observe the following correspondences:

1) |ǽ, a, o → e| |a: → ǽ| |ea, eo → ie| No new phonemes appeared because the sounds which appeared existed in the phonetic system before, they just started to be pronounced in different phonetic environment.

2) u → y Appeared the new phoneme y, which has never existed before.

OE Consonants

The OE consonant system was the following: 1) Noise consonants (plosive, fricative); 2) Sonorants

The distinctive feature of the system was the opposition between long and short con-s, they carried different meaning. But unlike the vowel system, which was symmetrical, the consonant system didn’t posses symmetry that means that not all short con-s had their long correspondence.

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

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

2. [ð] 	[d]	rauðr (Icelandic)	rēad (OE) (red)
   [v] 	[b]	-	-
   [γ] 	[g]	guma (Gothic)	ζuma (OE) (man)

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

[f, , h, s]  [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]  [g’, γ’, k’, h’] e.g. c[k’]ild (OE) (child); ecз[gg’] (OE) (edge), etc.