3. Reduction of non-stressed vowels

One of the most important phonetic phenomena- the reduction non-stressed vowels –took place in the transitional period between Old English and Middle English.

In Old English unstressed vowels were pronounced like stressed ones. Final unstressed vowels remained fully sounded.

For instance: in Old English Nominative plural was fiscas, genetive singular – ‘fisces’. In the Middle English period all the non-stressed vowels began to sound in the same way and turn into a neutral sound / /; which was written ‘e’ i.e. in Middle English the nominative plural was ‘fisces’ and the genitive singular ‘fisced’ too.

In Old English the indicative of ‘beon’ was ‘waeron’ and the subjective ‘waeren’.

Old English		Middle English
Sing.	Plur.	Sing.	Plur.
N. scip	S cipu	N. scip	S cipes
G. scipes	S cipa	G. scipes	scipe (s)
D. scipe	S сipum	D . scip (e)	S cipes
Acc. scip	S cipu	A cc. sci(e)	S cipes

Nasal consontants were unstable in Germanic languages. If non-stressed, the sounds /n/ and /m/ tended to become confused. Often /m n/, and in many cases /n/ at the end of words was dropped out, E. G. dative plural OE-scipum ME shipe(n) O.E. infinitive of the verb ‘-helpen’ helpe(n).

Quantitative changes in the stressed vowels:

1)Shortening of long vowels in closed syllables.

At the beginning of the Middle English period not only a reduction of the non-stressed vowels took place, but also a certain shortening of long vowels before two or more consonants, for example:

OE wīs	MidE W īs,	OE wīsdom	MidE wīsdom
OE	cēpte	M E	kēpan
Preterite	O E cēpte	ME	kept
OE	mōtan	“	mōten
P reterite	mētte	“	mett

2. The lengthening of short vowels in open syllables.

ex. O.E.	hopa	M.E.	hōpe
“	Ta lu	“	Т āle
“

Short ‘i’ and ‘u’ were usually not lengthenened, e.g. ‘risen’ ‘cume (n)’ and so on. In some dislects however ‘i’ and ‘u’ were also lengthened but at the same time they changed their quality by becoming more open e.g.

i	ē	O.E.	wīcu	Mid.E.	wīke	(week)
u	Ō	“	D ūru	“	dō	(door)

In monosyllabic words there was no lengthening, e.g.:

O.E

Bæþ

M.E.

bath, but

O.E.

Baþian

3) Qualitative changes in stressed vowels.