IV. Me consonant system. General characteristics.
The main developments in consonants between OE and ME were as follows:
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Phonemicisation of voiced and voiceless fricatives
Three pairs of forms are usually included in this discussion: [v, f], [z, s] and [ð, θ ]. In OE, these were pairs of allophones, in complementary distribution: voiceless forms appeared word-initially and word-finally, while voiced forms appeared intervocalically. In PDE the sounds are all distinct phonemes. This change seems to have taken place in the ME period.
(b) Norse supplied certain consonant-clusters , such as /sk/ in skyrte. This cluster had existed in prehistoric OE, but underwent a sound-change When, at the end of the OE period, the Norse form was borrowed into English, it developed a distinct meaning from its OE cognate scyrte SHIRT.
(c) Loss of h in <hl>, <hn>, <hr> : There is some controversy about this development, which had taken place by c.1200 at the latest, e.g. EME lauerd (OE hlaford LORD), ME ringe (OE hring RING). The cluster hw, however, remained in many dialects, though with various spellings; see p. 62 below.
(d) New diphthongs arose during the transition from OE to ME from vocalisations of OE w, g, h, such as:
ME dai (cf. WS dag),
ME drawe(n) (WS dragan),
ME spewe(n) (cf. WS speowian),
ME saugh
French loanwords supplied the inventory with the two new diphthongs ui, oi ME puint,
ME royal .
All OE diphthongs were monophthongized in ME.
The OE diphthongs monophthongised and merged with other sounds during the transition from OE to ME, and new diphthongs had emerged in the system through vocalizations of consonants and borrowings from French.