- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
II. Unstressed Vowels
Unstressed long vowels were gradually shortened in all Germanic languages. In English this process was completed during the earliest part of the Old English period. All the long vowels became short, and all the diphthongs were monophthongized in an unstressed position:
-
Goth. namō, dagōs (N,pl)
OE nama, dagas (N,pl) (name, days)
Goth. ahtau, sunau (D,sg
OE eahta, suna (D,sg) (eight, son)
B. Unstressed vowels often fluctuated, which is seen in spelling: OE woruld/worold.
C. Weakening of unstressed vowels took shape of changes:
-
æ > e:
tungæ >
tunge (tongue)
u > o:
meri >
mere (lake)
u > o:
fugul >
fugol (bird)
D. Very often the weakening resulted in the loss of an unstressed vowel. After long syllables it occurred earlier and more often than after short ones: Goth. flōdus; OE flōdu, flōd (flood).
E. Sometimes new unstressed vowel developed, esp. before r,l, n:
-
Goth. wintrus
OE winter
OSc. fingr
OE finger
Goth. fugls
OE fugul, fugol
F. In spite of the long process of weakening, OE final unstressed syllables contain various vowels – a, o, u, e, i: helpan (to help), huntoþ (hunting), sunu (son), writen (written), englisc (English).
In comparison with the later stages of its development Old English was ‘the period of full endings’ [H. Sweet].
III. Consonants
Palatalization of Velar Consonants
Palatalization of the velar stops [k] and [g] before (and sometimes after) front vowels began before the 6th century and continued up to the beginning of the Middle English period. It is difficult to say when the process ended because the written representation of these sounds did not change during the Old English period.
The sound [k] (the letter c) > [k’] > [ʧ]. Later it was represented in spelling by the digraph ch:
-
OSc. kinn
OE cinn
(ModE chin)
The sound [g] (the letter g, when doubled – cg) > [g’] > [ʤ] (later represented in spelling by ge, dge):
-
OHG sengen
OE seng(e)an
(ModE singe)
Dutch egg
OE ecg
(ModE edge)
The combination [sk] (the digraph sc) > [sk’] > [ђ] (later represented in spelling by the digraph sh):
-
OE scip, fisc, sceal
(ModE ship, fish, shall)
Palatalization did not take place before the front vowels which appeared as a result of palatal mutation.
-
OHG kuning
OE cyning
(ModE king)
This fact shows that the process of palatalization began before the palatal mutation [Khaimovich 1975].