3. Phonetic Changes in Middle English

In the ME period a great change affected the entire system of vowel phonemes. OE both short and long vowel phonemes could occur in any phonetic environment, so they were absolutely independent phonemic units. As a result of important changes coming into the vowel system in the 10-th-12^th centuries, the ME vowel system was basically disserent. While in OE quantity (length/shortness) was a distinctive phonemic feature, in ME (by the 13^th century) this is nolonger so. Quantity of vowels becomes dependent on their environment, to be exact, on what follows. With a few exceptions the situation in ME is briefly this: in some phonetic environments only short vowels can appear, while in other phonetic environments only long vowels can appear. The quantity (length/shortness( of a vowel is with few exceptions still to be considered unambiguously predetermined by the envirnonment. Thus quantity ceases being a phonemically relevant feature and becomes a merely phonetic peculiarity of a vowel sound.

A long vowel occurring before consonants (including doubled) is shortened: fedan (OE) – fedde (ME)- feed (NE). The vowels are shortened before two consonants, but remain long in other environment. However, long vowels remain long before the ‘lengthening’ consonant groups ld, nd, mb, st, rd, ng, i.e. those consisting of two voiced consonants articulated by the same organ of speech: wenan, wende (OE) – wende (ME) – think (NE).

In the 13^th century short vowels were lengthened in open syllbles. This was another item of the development which deprived quantity of its status as a phonemic fearyre. Lengthening affected the short vowels a,e,o. In the Northern dialects it started in the 12^th century and in the 13^th it spread all over the England. The long vowels e, o which resulted from this change were open vowels, thus long e from short e coincided with long e from æ and long ea; the long o from short o with long o from long (in Midland and Southern dialects): caru – care, talu-tale. The narrow vowels I and u remained as a rule unaffected by this change and thus the difference between short I and long I and also between short and long u retained its quality as a phonemically relevant feature. In a few words, however, the narrow vowels were wodened in the process, thus short I changed into long em short u changed into long o, as in wikes – wekes (weeks), dures – dores (doors), This change mainly occurred in the Northern dialect. It partly also affected the East Midland dialect.

OE short a usually remains unchanged in ME. OE a/o befor nasal developed differently in different dialects, In West Midland o was preserved: mon (man), con (can). In other dialects, that is in Northern, East Midland and Southern we find a: man, can. OE long a also developed in different ways in different dialects. IN the Northern dialect it remained unchanged, while in Midland and Southern it changed into long open o. Thus, in all dialects, except the Northern, the following changes took place: ham – hom (home), rad – rod (rode). OE short æ in most dialects developed in short a: wæs – was. However, in the West Midland and Kentish dialects OE æ changed into e: gled, wes. OE West Saxon long æ changed into long open e, as in slæpan – slepen (sleep), in other dialects (northern Midland and Kentish) this æ had changed into closed e.

OE short y developed differently in different dialects. In Northern and East Midland it changed into short I, that is it was unrounded. In Kentish short y became e, that is it was both unrounded and widened. In the remaining dialects (West Midland and South-Westerm) short y remained unchanged. In this way OE words containing an y-sound, were split in ME into three dialectal variants: hyll (OE) – hill, hell, hyll. OE long y developed in the sameway as short y. OE long and short e, long and short I and short o were unchanged in ME. OE long o mostly remained unchanged: boc – bok. However, in the Northern dialects the long o began to develop into long u in the 13^th century. OE short u and long u remained unchanged in ME.

All OE dipthongs were monophthongized in ME. OE short ea became a passing through the stage æ, as in eals – ald (old). OE ea before ld yielded different results in dofferent dialects: in Southern dialects – eals –eld (with long e); in Midland dialects an a corresponded to southern ea. Before ld this short a was lengthened into long a, and the long a changed into long open o. OE eas before h and the cluster ‘h+ consonant’ also yielded different results: eah into eh,eih (in Sothern dialects), eah into ah, auh (in Northern and Midland dialects). OE long ea changed into open long e, as in deawe – fewe (few). In Kentish dialect long OE ea developed into ye, ya, as in dead – dyed, dyad.

OE short eo changed first into the long vowel o, which survived in Wesy Midland and South-Western dialects until the 14^th century. In other dialects it became e in the 12^th century: heorte – herte. OE long eo changed into long closed e, often spelt ee, as in deop – deep, deor-deer. OE west Saxon ie,i,y after a palatal consonant yielded in ME South-Western dialect an I or u, in other dialects OE e without dipthongization is preserved: yeten, yelden (given).

An important change characteristic of the ME perios affected the unstressed vowles. All of them were as a rule weakened and reduced to a neutral vowel like Ə, which was denoted by the letter e. Thus, for exaple the infinitive suffix an was reduced to en, as in bindan – binden, tellan – tellen. The nominative plural ending as became es, as in stanas – stones. The weakening of unstressed vowles is closely connected with the developments in declension and conjugation. Whereas the stressed position allows a distinction of many vowle phonemes, the number of unstressed vowle phonemes was greatly reduced in ME.

Significant changes also took place in the system of consonants in ME. OE palatal c, which occurred initially befor front vowels except those which were a result of mutation, medially before i and finally after i developed ibto the affricate ʧ as in cild – child. In the Nortern dialects anfd in the northern part of the Midland variants are also found with k-sound. The preservation of the K-sound in the verbs (seken(seek), thinken (think) may also be due to the influence of the short forms of the 2-nd and 3-rd persons singular present indicative. OE clister cs changed into ʃ: scip – ship.

The OE long consonant denoted by the spellin cʒ developed into the voice affricate dʒ, as in brycʒ - bridge. In the Sourthen dialects initial f become voiced, as in f æder – vader (father). In Kent initial s in words of OE was also voiced as in synne – zenne (sin). In a few words the consonants v when followed by another consonant changed into u.

New dipthongs arise in ME, basically different in type from the OE dipthongs, which were monopthongized in ME. The new dipthongs originate from groups consisting of a vowel and either a palatal or a velar fricative. The palatal fricative ʒ [j] and the velar spirant ʒ [ɣ] are vocalized, cpmbime with the preceding vowel, and yield dipthongs of a new type.

The palatal consonant yields dipthongs in –I, and the velar one, which seems to have possessed a labial element in its articulation from the outset, yields dipthongs in –w.

The following changes took place accordingly:

rise of dipthongs in –i;

rise of dipthongs in –w;

rise of front vowels;

rise of long back labialized vowels.

When a vowel was followed by the voiceless spirant h, a glide developed between them and a dipthong arose: a+h – auh, augh (naht-naught); in Midland and Sothern dialects a+h – ough (dah – dough); in Northern dialect a+h - agh (dagh); o+h –ough (brohte – broughte); long o + h – ough, ugh (ploh – plough). The ü changed in the 13^th century into u befor ʧ, lʧ, dʒ, n ʧ, ʃ (OE mycel (large) – ME mu ʧƏl).

The ME sound system, as prepresented, for example in Chaucer’s works, differs materially from OE system, as found in the works of king Alfred. So the following changes took place:

oe diphtongs of the ea or eo type have disappeared;

dipthongs of the ei, ai type have arisen;

vowel quantity (shortness/length) has become dependent on phonetic environment;

the affricates ʧ, dʒ have arisen;

vowel quantity has lost its phonemic significance, that is two vowel phonemes can no longer be distinguished by quantity – length vs. shortness, thus the number of vowel phonemes has been reduced;

the appearance of the new dipthongs ai, ei, au, ou marks the rise of four new vowel phonemes;

the number of consonant phonemes has increased, the sounds f and v, s and z which in OE had been allophones of one phoneme, dependent on the environment, have become separate phonemes, no longer dependent on the environment

For various reasons - nobody knows what the primary and what the secondary reason of the most fundamental changes in Middle English language structure were. The first change in the phonological system to be mentioned is the levelling of sounds - vowels in the unstressed syllables. As we know. Old English had a fixed stress on the first syllable. So not only the final, but also middle sounds in polysyllabic words tend to change various sounds to one neutral sound shwa, [3] marked as e. In Old English at the end of the words we might find whatever sound: cara, cam, care - now all the forms merged into one care; in this way we may say that the paradigm was simplified; at the same time in verbs various endings also merged into a single sound form -writan, writen, writon - writen; writad, writed- to writethfy\nu\ sounds m and n are pronounced indistinctly in such forms and are also on the way to being lost altogether: carum, stanum - care, stone. Final n was either pronounced or not depending on the following sound - and so we have variants in some forms (the form of the infinitive writen - write).

In the unstressed syllables of the verb forms most frequent is the case that it was preserved in the forms of the participle, and tended to be lost in the infinitive; but even in the participles it was lost if the root of the word already had a nasal sound (binden - bound - bounden - later simply bound; exceptions are possible, and in present day English we have cases of variant forms of the participles, say got - gotten (Br.-Am.); but always forgotten).

The same phenomenon is seen in the numeral an (one) that became an indefinite article (a) in present day English, and in possessive pronouns mine and thine that have forms my and thy if they are not followed by a noun that begins with a vowel.

With the stressed vowels the situation was different. Here we may mention the general tendency as well as the behaviour of various individual vowels.

There were quantitative changes in vowels. In Old English a short or a long vowel might be found in any position; they were absolutely independent phonemic units. The Middle English vowel system was basically different-The quantity of vowels becomes dependent on the environment, on what followsjhevowel. With a few exceptions the situation in Middle English is briefly this: in some phonetic environment only short vowels are possible; in the other the vowels are invariably long. Thus quantity becomes a positional characteristic of a sound.

First, a long vowel before two consonants (including a geminated consonant marking a long consonant sound) is shortened; the exception here are the clusters mb, Id, nd (i.e. two voiced sonorants) or when the two consonants belonged to the second syllable of the word {masste, lest -> most; least).Compare: OE сёрап - cepte ME kepen, kepe - kept; OE fedan -fedde - ME feed - fed

In the 13th century short vowels were lengthened in the open syllables. This lengthening affected the short vowels a, o, e. cam - care became similar to words formerly having short vowel: talu - tale, и and 1 mainly remained unaffected.

The most significant change was monophthongization of Old English diphthongs. The sounds that appeared as a result of this process were not new to the English language - they simply coincided with the sounds that already existed in the language, in many cases returning the vowel to its previous quality, which was changed in the course of breaking, diphthongization after palatal consonants, and mutations: short ea —>æ—>a, short eo —> e closed (e).

Long diphthongs behaved a little differently. The changes were as follows:

éą> æ -> æ(this sound might be represented by the letters e, ea) east - e:st Long eo merged with long open e (found mainly in the open syllables) and short eo with short closed e (in the closed syllables). Other important changes are:

long â turned into long o: st â n - stóne (stone) ham - home (home) Long and short у gave i in the north and east

u in the west

e in the south

So, all in all, the system of vowels contained short i, e closed, Ҽ open, а, о and и which developed i - from Old English, e - from Old English, a - from Old English, o- from Old English, u - from Old English. The origin of OE long vowels looks like the following: long I from OE, long closed e – from OE, a – from OE, a – from OE, o – from OE, u – form OE. The origin of OE long vowels looks like the following: long I form OE, long e – from OE, etc.

New diphthongs appeared in Middle English as a result of the changes in the consonant system of the language.

The changes in consonants were as follows:

к' - [tʃ] marked by ch

cild - child

cm - chyn, chin

sk' - [ʃl marked by sh (the process began in Old English but was completed in Middle English) sceal -shall sap - ship

h at the beginning of the word was lost in clusters hr, hi, hn, hw

The sound у (marked by j) in the intervocal position vocalised and turned into w, which led to the following diphthongs: a Ʒ- aw(au) draƷ an - drawen

Alongside the changed English sounds Middle English had a number of French unassimilated sounds паШге, nasal a, e, о and w, the consonant j. Their fate was to assimilate later. Joy, nature, simple, entren, abandoun, -the words with French sounds we have in present day-English are the borrowings from later periods.