Early ne phonetics

Stress Patterns:

• the ‘recessive’ tendency – from the end to the beginning (2-syll words)

• the rhythmic tendency – secondary stress appeared at a distance of 1 syl from the original stress

• in polysyllabic words both tendencies operated together.

+ morphological cause (noun-verb)

Vowels

In unstressed positions were lost even in the inflexions of the words: nama – name – name

BUT: wanted [id] – phonetical reason

QUALITATIVE CHANGES

The Great Vowel Shift – Otto Jespersen – between 15^th and 18^th centuries – didn’t change spelling!

ME	ENE	ME Chaucer	ENE Shakespeare
i:	ai	time [ti:me]	time
a:	ei	make [ma:ke]	make
e:	i:	keepen [ke:pen]	keep
ɔː	ou	stone [stɔːne]	stone
u:	au	mous [mu:s]	mouse
o:	u:	moon [mo:n]	moon

Interpretations of GVS:

• a push chain (K. Luick)

• a drag chain (Andre Martinet)

• a social explanation (Leith)

Changes in short monophthongs

1) [a] > [ae]: man; after [w] – [o] (water)

2) [u] > [ʌ] (hut); after p,b,f > [u] (the change didn’t take place: put; exception – BUT)

Changes in diphthongs

1) [ai] > [ei] (day)

2) [au] > [o:] (process of contraction: lawe – law)

QUANTITATIVE CHANGES

1) Mainly it influences the vowel [a] before consonant groups: ss, ft, nt

plant ME [a] – NE [a:]

after

mass

2) Shortening of vowels – the long vowel [e:] & [u:] were shortened before single several dental

and velar consonants [θ, d, t, k]: breath ME [e:] – NE [e]

3) The long [u:] became short before [k,t] (product of the GVS): book, foot

GROWTH OF LONG MPHS AND DPHS

1) [x] and [x’] were vocalized in LME. Later [x] was lost and [au] was contracted to [o:]

taughte – taught, broughte – brought

2) [x’] > [j] > [i] = [i] + [i] > [i:] > [ai] (GVS) (night [nix’t > nijt > ni:t> nait]

3) LME [r] made the preceding vowels more open and retracted (heorte – heart; exc: person)

Ben Johnson: [r] was vocalized: vowel + r = shwa

• it was added to the preceding vowel as a glide, forming a diphthong (there)

• sometimes the preceding vowel was lengthened to compensate the loss (arm [a:])

• when [r] stood in the final unstressed position after [ə], the vocalization of [r] to [ə] resulted in the survival of the ending: rider(e) – rider

• if [r] was preceded by a diphthong, it was added to it, to form a triphthong (shower)

BUT [r] was NOT vocalized:

1. when doubled

2. after consonants

3. initially

Result of this vocalizion: there appeared:

1. a new set of diphthongs with ə-glides [iə, eə, uə, etc.]

2. a new long monophthong [e:]

3. the new long [a:]

4. the triphthongs

Consonants

1) Appearance of sibilants and affricates:

new – [ʒ]

[sj] – [ʃ] (condition)

[zj] – [ʒ] (pleasure)

[tj] – [tʃ] (culture)

[dj] – [dʒ] (soldier)

2) voicing of fricatives – the so-called “Verner’s Law in NE”

[s,f,θ] were voiced after an unstressed vowel or in words having no sentence stress

3) loss of consonants:

• [h] was lost initially (honour; but not in all words)

• the initial [kn, gn] > [n] (know)

• the final [b] was lost in cluster (lamb)