System of Vowels in Late Middle English

To sum up the results of Early ME vowel changes the system of vowels in Late ME is given in Table 7.6.

Table 7.6

Middle English Vowels (the Age of Chaucer, Late 14th c.)

Monophthongs		Diphthongs
Short	i e a o u	ei ai oi au au ou
Long	i: e: : a: : o: u:

As seen from the table, the system of vowels in Late ME was no longer symmetrical. The OE balance of long and short vowels had been disrupted and was never restored again.

3.4. Consonants

The most important change in the consonant system is the development of the fricative consonant [] and the affricates [] and [] from OE palatal consonants or consonant combinations. For instance:

OE ME

[k’] > [] cild child

benc bench

cin chin

cicen chicken

[sk’] > [] scip ship

sceal shall

[g’] > [] bryc bridge

The phoneme denoted in OE by the letter c had two variants: [k] – hard and [k’] – palatal; the former remained unchanged, the latter gave us a new phoneme, the phoneme [].

The phoneme denoted by the letters g or c and which existed in four variants: [g’], [g] – in spelling c and [j], [γ] – in spelling  had the following development:

[g’] > [] bridge

[j], [γ] were vocalized: dæ > dai, iet > yet

boa > boue, draan > drauen

[g] remained unchanged: ōd > good

3. Conclusions: changes in me phonetic system

1. Vowels in the unstressed position were levelled.

2. The sounds [æ] and [y] dissapeared from the system of the language.

3. There were no long diphthongs.

4. New diphthongs of the ei, ai type appeared with the glide more close than the nucleus (as contrasted to OE with the glide more open than the nucleus).

5. No parallelism existed between long and short monophthongs different only in their quantity.

6. The quantity of the vowel (i.e. the shortening / length) became dependent upon the phonetic environment (i.e. its position in the word: a, o, e – always long in an open syllable or before ld, mb, nd; all vowels are always short before two consonants, with the exception of ld, mb, nd). Only in one position – in a closed syllable before one consonant vowels of any quantity could be found (wīs but pig). A long and the corresponding short vowel became mere allophones of the same phoneme:

7. New affricate phonemes [],[] and the fricative [] appeared in the system of the language.