3. Changes in the phonetic system in Middle English

3.1. The word stress

In OE the stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable: the prefix or the root of the word could be stressed while the suffixes and endings were unaccented. Word stress in OE was fixed: it never moved in inflection and seldom in derivation.

This way of word accentuation, characteristic of OE, was considerably altered in the succeeding periods. The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of thousands of loan-words adopted during the ME period.

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. 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. 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 ['və:ə], cf. native English shortly, childish. 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 also be caused 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'mendən] > NE recommend [rekə'mend] – ss’ss > ss's;

ME disobeien [diso'beiən] > NE disobey ['diso'bei] – ss'ss > 'ss's;

ME comfortable [komfor'tablə]>NE comfortable ['kmfətəbl] – ss:>'sss.

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 ‘accept’, engendren ‘engender’, presenten ‘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.

Thus, the entire system of word accentuation has altered. 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.

2. Vowels in the unstressed position

All vowels in the unstressed position changed and became [ə] or [i] unstressed. This phonetic change had a far-reaching effect upon the system of the grammatical endings of the English words, which now due to the process of reduction became homonymous. For example:

• forms of strong verbs

OE writan - wrāt – writon – writen with the suffixes –an, -on, -en different only in the vowel component became homonymous in ME:

written – wrōt – writen – writen

• forms of nouns

OE nominative plural a-stem fiscas

ME fisces

genitive singular fisces

or

OE dative singular fisce

ME fisce

genitive plural fisca