Lecture 3 The Old English Period: oe Phonetics

1. Oe Word Stress.

The studies of the OE phonetic system are based upon Old English written records. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. There was no gap between OE reading and spelling.

It underwent multiple changes in the pre-writing periods of history, especially in Early OE.

The system of word accentuation was inherited from PG. It underwent no changes in Early OE.

The OE word stress was dynamic (force): in OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either.

e.g. Nom. case hlaford (lord) [‘xla:vord], cyninz (king) [‘kyning]

Dat. case. hlaforde [‘xla:vorde], cyninze [‘kyniŋge]

Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, usually had two stresses: chief and secondary. The chief stress is fixed on the first root-morpheme.

e.g. Norąmanna (Northmen) [‘normona]

In words with prefixes verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix.

e.g. verb ‘ā-risan (“arise”)

adjective ‘or-eald (“very old”)

noun ‘mis-dæd (“misdeed”)

If the words were derived from the same root, word stress, together with other means, served to distinguish the noun from the verb.

e.g. verb and-‘swarian - noun ‘and - swaru (“answer”)

verb for – ‘weorþ-an - noun ‘forwyrd (“perish”,“destruction”)

2. Oe Vowel System.

The OE vowel system displayed an obvious tendency towards a symmetrical, balanced arrangement. It can be proved by the fact of existence a corresponding short vowel to almost every long vowel. However, the appearance of the nasalised [a] in the set of short vowels tended to break the balance.

Table 1.

The Old English vowels (the boldly printed sounds are labialised)

	FRONT	CENTRAL	BACK
CLOSE	i: y: i y io:		u: u
HALF-CLOSE	e: eo: ea: e → eo		o: o
OPEN	æ ← ε∂ æ:	→ a ← a:	כ

As it can be studied from Table 1 there were such chief phonetic oppositions in the OE vowel system: vowels were contrasted through quantity as long to short and were further distinguished within their sets of qualitative differences as monophthongs and diphthongs, open and close, front and back, labialised and non-labialised.

The OE vowel system had its peculiar features:

1) it was highly developed (as Table1 shows);

2) labialised vowels could be both back and front;

3) there were many diphthongs, their both parts were pronounced clear and fully;

4) diphthongs were descending (falling): their first syllables were stressed;

5) the rate of oral speech in OE was slower than the speed of modern speech: it can be proved by the fact of full vocalism in the system of diphthongs (повноголоснi дифтонги).

All the vowels listed in Table1 could occur in stressed position. In unstressed syllables only five monophthongs could be found: i, e, a, o, u.