The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)

The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) is a systematic change in the pronunciation of long stressed vowels in English. The shift took place from about the middle of the 15^th century and continued till about the end of 16^th. It changed radically the sound of spoken English making its vowels unique in pronunciation among European languages. It also affected the way in which English verse was written (by changing radically the rhyming possibilities of the language). Finally, it was the key change that transformed Middle English into Modern English. GVS has become something of a myth in English linguistic history. The origins of the Great Vowel Shift have, notoriously, been regarded by many scholars as ‘mys'terious’.

The Shifts took place at a key moment of transition in the history of English, when it ceased to be a language of comparatively low status in comparison with Latin and French and began to take on national roles, that is to say that it underwent a process which linguists refer to as ‘elaboration’. The elaboration of English meant that prestigious varieties of that language would begin to emerge.

Indeed, it is because of the GVS that the language of Chaucer was largely opaque by Shakespeare’s time.

The process that took place during the Great Vowel Shift was rather a redistribution of sounds within the lexicon, then their alteration. The phonological essence of GVS consisted in reducing a number of long vowels in English and merging them with the diphthongs, already existing in the language. The Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sounds to the vowel system; in fact any vowel which developed under the Shift can be found in late ME. Only long vowels were affected. These were long, stressed monophthongs.

ME	(intermediate stages)		ModE.	Examples
phonetic changes				ME	ModE
[i:]			[ai]	time ['ti:ma]	time
[e:]			[i:]	deep [de:p] me [me:]	time me
[ε:]		[e:]	[i:]	east [e:st]	east
[a:]			[ei]	maken ['ma:kən] table [ta:blə]	make table
[ɔ:]		[o:]	[ou]	stone [sto:n] boat [bo:t]	stone boat
[о:]			[u:]	moon [mo:n] don [do:n]	moon do
[u:]			[au]	mous [mu:s] oure/ ure [u:re] now [nu:]	mouse our now
[au]			[ɔ:]	cause ['kauzə] drawen ['drauən]	cause draw

As a result of the GVS the following ME long phonemes disappeared: i:, u:, e:, o:, ε:, a:

The GVS can be summarized as follows:

1. High vowels were made into diphthongs.

[i:] changed into [ai] (mice [mi:s] > [mais];

[u:] changed into [au] (house [hu:s] > [haus].

2. The mid-open vowels were raised.

[e:] changed into [i:] (deep [de:p] > [di:p]);

[ε:] changed into [e:], then into [i:] (east [ε:st]>[e:st]>[i:st];

[o:] changed into [u:] (moon [mo:n] > [mu:n].

3. Back open vowels were raised and made into diphthongs

[a:] became [ei] (name [na:m] > [neim]; (low back)

[ɔ:] changed into [ou] (ston [stɔ:n] > [stoun]).(long open)

4. The diphthong [au] changed into the long monothong [ɔ:].

It is believed that at first these changes only happened within some speech communities, and slowly, by degrees, so that the older and newer pronunciations would be heard at the same time.

Northern dialects of Middle English were not affected so immediately by the shift of long vowels. Present-day Scots, for example, still retain the old pronunciation of house [hu:s].

The Great Vowel Shift, unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes, was not followed by any regular spelling changes. The modification in the pronunciations of words usually was not reflected in their written forms. The few graphic replacements made in the 16^th century also failed to reflect the changes. For instance, in the 16^th c. the close [o:] was shown as oo, and the more open [ɔ:] was generally shown as oa. After the shift oo stands for [u:] while oa stands for [ou]. Another example: ie, ее, and e represented the close [e:], ea was used to show the more open [ε:]. After the shift, [e:], [ε:] became [i:], so the graphic distinctions became unnecessary: steal, steel.

During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed:

ME	A	[a:]	ModE	A	[ei]
	E	[е:]		E	[i:]
	I	[i:l		I	[ai]
	O	[о:]		О	[ou]
	В	[bе:]		В	[bi:l
	К	[ka:]		К	[kei], etc.

The Great Vowel Shift has attracted the attention of many linguists, as it left no long vowel unaltered. In spite of numerous theories the problem of this shift still remains unresolved.