Evolution of Sound system from the 11th to 18th c.

Plan:

1. Preliminary remarks.

2. Word stress in Middle English and Early New English.

3. Vowel changes.

4. Consonant changes.

1. The sound system of the English language has undergone profound changes in the thousand years which have elapsed since the OE period. The changes affected the pronunciation of words, word accentuation, and the systems of vowel and consonant phonemes. The sound changes in the following survey are grouped into two main stages: Early Middle English changes, which show the transition from Written OE to Late Middle English — the age of literary flourishing or "the age of Chaucer" — and Early New English changes, which show the transition from Middle English to later New English — the language of the 18^th and 19^th c.

2. In OE stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable: the prefix or the root of the word was stressed while the suffixes and endings were unstressed. Word stress in OE was fixed: it never moved in inflection and in derivation. This way of word stress, was considerably changed in the succeeding periods. The word stress began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of words, adopted during the Middle English period. In Late ME poetry it was possible to find a variety of differently stressed words. Though poetry permits certain instability of word stress New stressed patterns were found in numerous ME words borrowed from French. Probably, when they first entered the English language they contained their original stress. This kind of stress could not be preserved for long time. As the words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word in line with the English (Germanic) system. This shift is called the "recessive" (!) tendency. In disyllabic words the stress moved to the first syllable, so that the resulting pattern conformed to the pattern of native words. E.g. ME vertu [ver'tju: ] became NE virtue ['vә:t∫ә].

In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the "rhythmic" tendency, which required regular changes of stressed and unstressed syllables. Under the rhythmic tendency, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. This new stress was either preserved as a secondary stress or became the principal stress of the word.

E.g. ME recommenden [reko'mendәn] - NE recommend [,rekә'mend]; ME comfortable [komfor'tablә] - NE comfortable ['k^mfәtәbl]; In many polysyllabic words both tendencies, the recessive and the rhythmic, operated together and brought about several changes. Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also some morphological factors. Thus, the stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed in Late ME and in Early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, E.g. ME accepten, engendren, presenteri - NE accept, engender, present.

Corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: E.g. NE 'present n — pre'sent v; 'discord n — dis'cord v. These examples show that word stress performs a phonological function as it distinguishes a verb from a noun. The position of word stress has become relatively free and its phonological application has widened: it can be shifted in word derivation, though it is never moved in building grammatical forms.

3. Unstressed vowels. Extensive changes of vowels are one of the most remarkable features of English linguistic history. A variety of changes affected vowels in stressed syllables; the modification of unstressed vowels was more uniform and simple.

The boundaries between stressed and unstressed vowels were not static: in the course of time a vowel could lose or acquire stress, as in many words stress was shifted. In ME and NE the main direction of the evolution of unstressed vowels was the same as before. The tendency towards phonetic reduction operated in all periods of history and was particularly strong in unstressed final syllables in ME. In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguished five short vowels in unstressed position, Late ME had only two vowels in unstressed syllables: [ә] and [i]. Final O.E. [a] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as [-e]. The loss of [a] started in the North, spread to the Midlands, and reached the Southern areas by the 15^th c. In the London dialect of Chaucer's time it was very unstable and could be easily missed out before a following initial vowel or when required by rhythm. When the ending [-e] survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before: E.g. OE stan, rod and ME stoon, stone, rode (M.E. stone, rode). While the OE unstressed vowels were reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes appeared the processes: the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ә]. Some of the new unstressed vowels were reduced to the neutral [ә] or dropped, while others have retained certain qualitative and quantitative differences. E.g. [o] and [ei] in consecrate, disobey after the shift of stress. These developments show that the gap between the stressed and unstressed vowels has narrowed, so that in ME and NE we can no longer subdivide the vowels into two distinct sub-systems — that of stressed and unstressed vowels.

Stressed vowels. They changed in quality and quantity, under the influence of the environment independently, alone and together with the surrounding sounds. Not a single OE long monophthong or diphthong remained unchanged in the course of history; only a few short [i]s were not changed, unless they were lengthened.

The system of vowel phonemes has undergone drastic (!) changes. Though the total number phonemes have remained the same, their distinctive features of their opposition in the system have changed.

At all times long sounds displayed a strong tendency to come narrower and to diphthongise, but short vowels displayed the greater openness.

Qualitative and quantitative changes often proceeded together. Early M.E. is mainly characterized by positional quantitative changes of monophthongs. OE diphthongs were monongised and lost, and new types of diphthongs developed from vowels and consonants. Late ME was the period of new changes: independent qualitative changes of all long vowels known as the "Great Shift"; it lasted from the 14^th till the18^th c.

4. English consonants were more stable than vowels. A large number of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. It could be mentioned that the sonorants [m, n, 1], the plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been subjected to any changes. The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the growth of new sets of sounds, — affricates and sibilants (!), — and the new phonological treatment of fricatives. On the other hand, some consonants were lost or vocalized. 

Sibilants and Affricates. In OE there were no affricates and no sibilants, except [s, z]. The earliest distinct sets of these sounds appeared towards the end of OE or during the Early ME period. The new type of consonants developed from OE palatal plosives [k', g'] (which had split from the corresponding velar plosives [k] and [g] in Early OE, and also from the consonant cluster [sk']. The three new phonemes which arose from these sources were [t∫], [d] and [∫]. In Early ME they began to be indicated by special letters and digraphs — ch, tch, g, dg, sh, ssh, sch.   Development of Sibilants and Affricates in Early Middle English

 

Change illustrated		Examples
OE	ME	OE	ME	NE
k'	t∫	cild	child [t∫: ld]	child
g'	d	bryce	bridge ['bridә]	bridge
sk'	∫	sceap	sheep [∫:p]	sheep

It must be added that the affricates [t∫] and [d] could also come from a different source: they entered the English language from French. E.g. ME. charme ['t∫armә], gentil [den'til].

As a result of these changes — and also as a result of the vocalisation of [y] — the consonant system in Late ME was in some respects different from the OE system. The opposition of velar consonants to palatal— [k, k'; y, j]—had disappeared; instead, plosive consonants were contrasted to the new affricates and in the set of affricates [t∫] was opposed to [d] through sonority. Another development accounting for the appearance of sibilants and affricates in the English language is connected with the phonetic assimilation of lexical borrowings In the numerous words of Romance origin adopted in ME and Early NE, the stress fell on the ultimate (!) or penultimate (!) syllable. E.g. ME na’cioun – M.E. nation. In accordance with the phonetic tendencies the stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. The final syllables which thus became unstressed or weakly stressed underwent phonetic changes: the vowels were reduced and sometimes dropped; the sounds making up the syllable became less distinct. As a result some sequences of consonants moved into single consonants.

 Fricative Consonants in Middle English and Early New English.

In OE the pairs of fricative consonants — [f] and [v], [θ] and [∂], [s] and [z]—were treated as allophones; sonority depended on phonetic conditions: in intervocalic position they appeared as voiced, otherwise — as voiceless. In ME and in Early NE these allophones became independent phonemes. Phonologisation of voiced and voiceless fricatives was a slow process which lasted several hundred years. The first pair of consonants which became phonemes was [f] and [v]. E.g. ME veyne and feine ['veinә, 'feinә] (NE vein, feign). The two other pairs, [θ, ∂] and [s, z], also functioned as allophones. A new change took place in the 16th c. The fricatives were once again subjected to voicing under certain phonetic conditions. So, they were pronounced as voiced if they were preceded by an unstressed vowel and followed by a stressed one. E.g. Early NE possess [po'zes] — ME possessen [po'sesәn] – M.E. posses. The examples show that one phonetic condition — an unstressed preceding vowel—was sufficient to transform a voiceless sibilant into a voiced one; the second condition — a succeeding stressed vowel — was less important: [s] is the last sound of the word.

The endings took no stress but could be followed by other words beginning with stressed syllable. This supposition is confirmed by the voicing consonants in many form-words: an article, pronouns, auxiliaries, prepositions; they receive no stress in speech but may be surrounded by notional words which are logically stressed.

On the whole the Early NE voicing of fricatives was rather irregular. Though it was a positional change occurring in certain phonetic conditions, these conditions were often contradictory. After these changes voiced and voiceless fricatives could appear in similar phonetic conditions and could be used for phonological purposes to distinguish between morphemes; in other words, they bad-turned into phonemes. E.g. NE thy [∂ai]; ice [ais] and eyes [aiz].

Loss of Consonants.

The system of consonants underwent important changes in ME and Early NE, it acquired new phonemes and new phonemic distinctions, namely a distinction between plosives, sibilants and affricates, a phonemic distinction through sonority in the sets of fricatives, sibilants and affricates. On the other hand, some changes led to the reduction of the consonant system and also to certain restrictions in the use of consonants. Another important event was the loss of quantitative distinctions in the consonant system. It should be recalled that in OE long consonants were opposed to short at the phonological level. In Late ME long consonants were shortened and the phonemic opposition through quantity was lost. The loss of long consonant phonemes has been attributed to a variety of reasons. Long consonants disappeared firstly because their function was very low; secondly, because length was becoming a prosodic feature. In ME the length of the syllable was regulated by the lengthening and shortening of vowels; therefore the quantitative differences of the consonants became irrelevant. In addition, some consonants underwent positional changes which restricted their use in the language. The consonants [j ] and [r] were vocalized under certain phonetic conditions — finally and before consonants — during the Middle English and Early NE periods, though they continued to be used in other environments. E. g. Middle English rechen - M.E. reach; Middle English yeer - M.E. year. Some consonants were lost in consonant clusters (!), which became simpler and easier to pronounce. E.g. [x] survived in ME as an aspirate [h], when followed by a vowel, but was lost when followed by a sonorant. OE he – Middle English he [he:] - M.E. he; and OE hlǽne which became ME leene ['1е:nә] - M.E. lean. OE hlystan and Middle English listen ['listәn] – M.E. listen, as [t] was dropped between [s] and [n].

Lecture 14