4. Palatal mutation

The OE tendency to positional vowel change is most apparent in the process termed “mutation”. Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable.

The most important type of mutation is that caused by an i (j) of the following syllable, hence called “i-mutation”.

This is the name given to a kind of regressive assimilation. Under the influence of i (j) the vowels of the preceding syllable moved to a higher front position.

These sounds [i] and [j] are made with the tongue high up in the front of the mouth and it would seem that speakers began to prepare for this high front sound before they had finished the vowel of the stressed syllable. As a result they pronounced the stressed syllable higher and further forward than they should have done. The ubstressed syllable then disappeared, as in menn, or was changed in form, as we shall see later.

If we take, for example, the change *fullian > fyllan ‘fill’, the essence of the process is this. The vowel u is articulated by raising the back of the tongue and simultaneously rounding the lips; the sound i (j) requires raising the front of the tongue. When the speaker begins to articulate the u, he at the same time anticipates the articulation needed for i, and raises the front of the tongue instead of its back. The lip-rounding, meanwhile, is preserved. The result is the vowel y (remember the pronunciation of OE y - like MnGerm u-umlaut).

Monophthongs

a > e Gt sandian > sendan (send) a > e OE ani > OE eni (any) e > e * t elian > OE tellan (tell) o > e * ofstian > OE efstan (hurry) o > e Gt doms,*domjan > OE dom,deman (doom, to deem) u > y OHG kuning > OE cynin (king) u > y *ontunian > OE ontynan (open) [tun ‘fence’]

Diphthongs

ea  ie *ealdira > OE eald, ieldra (old – elder) eo  Note: As seen from the examples, after [i] or [j] had produced the mutation, they were frequently lost.

Since the sounds [i] and [j] were common in suffixes and endings, palatal mutation was of very frequent occurrence. Practically all Early OE monophthongs, as well as diphthongs except the closest front vowels [e] and [i] were palatalized in these phonetic conditions.

The palatal mutation has left many traces in Modern English. The vowel interchange serves now to distinguish:

1. different parts of speech:  doom - to deem, food - to feed, blood - to bleed, full - to fill, Angles - English, long- length;

2. different forms of a word:  tooth - teeth, goose - geese, foot - feet, mouse - mice ( OE mus - mys), old - elder.

5. VELAR MUTATION

This is another regressive assimilation, also called “back mutation”, as it was caused by back vowels (u, o, a) of the following syllable. The essence of back mutation is this. Under the influence of u, o, a the front vowels I, e, e of a preceding syllable were usually diphthongized.

i > io OE silufr > siolufr > siolfor (silver) e > eo OE hefun > heofon (heaven) e > ea OE c eru > cearu (care)

As we see, the assimilation was partial, since only part of the front vowels became velar. But after the sound [w] full assimilation occurred.

OE widu > wudu (wood) OE werold > worold (world)

Back mutation did not spread equally to all OE dialects and was of comparatively importance for the further development of the English language.

6. THE LENGTHENING OF SHORT VOWELS BEFORE CERTAIN CONSONANT COMBINATIONS

In the 9th century short vowels were lengthened before the combinations ld, nd and mb, i.e. a sonorous consonant plus a homorganic voiced plosive. If, however, the combination was followed by another consonant, the lengthening did not take place. The characteristic feature of the combinations in question is that both consonants are articulated by the same speech organ and that they are both voiced (so-called homorganic combinations).

Old English Grammar

1. PARTS OF SPEECH AND GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES

Old English was a synthetic, or inflected type of language; it showed the relations between words and expressed other grammatical meanings mainly with the help of simple (synthetic) grammatical forms. In building grammatical forms OE employed grammatical endings, sound interchanges in the root, grammatical prefixes, and suppletive formation.

Grammatical endings, or inflections, were certainly the principal form-building means used: they were found in all the parts of speech that could change their form; they were usually used alone but could also occur in combination with other means.

Sound interchanges were employed on a more limited scale and were often combined with other form-building means, especially endings. Vowel interchanges were more common than interchanges of consonants.

The use of prefixes in grammatical forms was rare and was confined to verbs. Suppletive forms were restricted to several ptonouns, a few adjectives and a couple of verbs.

The parts of speech to be distinguished in OE are as follows: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral (all referred to as nominal parts of speech), the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection. Inflected parts of speech possessed certain grammatical categories displayed in formal and semantic correlations and oppositions of grammatical forms. Grammatical categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in nominal parts of speech and verbal categories found chiefly in the finite verb.

We shall assume that there were five nominal grammatical categories in OE: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison, and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness. Each part of speech had its own peculiarities in the inventory of categories and the number of members within the category (categorial forms). The noun had only three grammatical categories: number, case and gender. The adjective had the maximum number of categories - five. The number of members in the same grammatical categories in different parts of speech did not necessarily coincide: thus the noun had four cases, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative, whereas the adjective had five (the same four cases plus the Instrumental case). The personal pronouns of the 1st and 2nd person, unlike other psrts of speech, distinguished three numbers - singular, Plural and Dual.