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

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, the systems of vowel and consonant phonemes.

The sound changes are grouped into two main stages: Early ME changes, which show the transition from Written OE to Late ME — the age of literary flourishing or “the age of Chaucer” — and Early NE changes, which show the tran­sition from ME to later NE — the language of the 18th and 19th c.

Word Stress in Middle English and Early New English.

In Late ME poetry we find a variety of differently stressed words. Though poetry permits certain fluctuation of word accent, this variety testifies to greater freedom in the position of word stress.

New accentual patterns are found in numerous ME loan-words from French. Probably, when they first entered the English language they retained their original stress — on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable. This kind of stress could not be preserved for long. Gradually, as the loan-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 accounted for by what is known as the “recessive” tendency. In disyllabic words the accent 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 [‘v∂:t∫∂]. The shift can be shown as follows: s's>'ss (s stands for “syllable”).

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 a regular alternation 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 else became the only or the principal stress of the word, e.g.

ME recommenden [reko'mend∂n]>NE recommend [,rek∂'mend]— ss'ss>,ss's;

ME disobeien [diso'bei∂n] > NE disobey ['diso'bei] — ss'ss>'ss's.

In many polysyllabic words both tendencies, the recessive and the rhythmic, operated together and brought about several changes. For instance in NE consolation [,kons∂’lei∫n] we find the results of the shift from the final to the preceding syllable [lei] due to the recessive tendency and a secondary stress on the first syllable. In NE possibility the rhythmic factor accounts both for the primary and secondary stresses (the original position of the accent was on the last syllable).

Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also to certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed or built in Late ME and in Early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, e.g. ME accepten, engendren, presenten, NE accept, engender, present. Cf. NE verbs befall, mistake, forget. Corresponding nouns sometimes, though not always, received the stress on the first syllable: NE 'present n — pre'sent v; 'discord n — dis'cord v. The latter pairs of words show that the role of word accen­tuation has grown: word stress performs a phonological function as it distinguishes a verb from a noun.