Hoofdstuk 3: Historical English Phonology

4 phases model

1. Old English

2. Middle English

3. Early Modern English

4. Modern English

changes on different linguistic levels

• lexical

• sound

• morphological

• syntactic

• semantic: affect meaning of words

I-mutation

Back vowels were fronted and low vowels were raised in syllables that preceded an /i/ or /j/ sound
ex. *mus-is => mysis => mys (mouse/mice). Rounded vowels were unrounded in Old English
ex. mys => mice

ablaut / vowel gradation

The regular change of vowel qualities in etymologically related forms or words to signal grammatical function.
ex. ridan rad/ridon geriden
lezen las gelezen

Changes from Old English to Middle English

• Long vowels were shortened before CCC cluster
  ex. godspel => gospel

• Lengthening groups

  • Short vowels were lengthened before the lengthening groups: mb, nd, ld and rd
    ex. climb, wind, cild

  • This change did not take place if the lengthening group was followed by a third consonant
    ex. children

• Regularization of syllable structure

  • in open SYL, vowel become long

    ex. cepan → keep

    BUT in antepenultimate SYL, vowel become short

    ex. serenity

  • in closed SYL, vowel become short

    ex. cepte

Changes during Middle English

• Loss of inflectional endings

  • unstressed vowels weakened to schwa

    → almost complete loss of inflectional endings!! (couldn’t be distinguished and therefore become useless)

  • English shifted from synthetic to analytic language

  • word order was fixed to SVO

Changes from Middle English to Early Modern English

• loss of /x/

  • Therefore the preceding vowel was lengthened
    ex. <night> = /nixt/ → /ni:t/ → nait (GVS)

  • Certain accents changed /x/ to /f/. So English words that derived from this
    ex. laugh

• The Great Vowel shift

  • all long vowels were raised!!!

  • the vowels that could not be raised any further because they were high already got diphthongized

  • (kijk schema)

Changes during Early Modern English

Vowel changes

• short /ʊ/ changed to /ʌ/

  ex. but, butter, cup

  However, this change did not take place in all words

  ex. pull, put, wolf, bull

• Middle English /ɛː/ was shortened to /e/ in some words

  ex. breath, bread, sweat, spread

• Middle English /oː/ was shortened to /ʊ/

  Depending on whether this shortening took place early, the resulting /ʊ/ underwent the regular further change to /ʌ/ (blood, flood, see above) or not (look, foot).

Consonant changens

• /k/ and /g/ were lost before nasals at the beginning of words

  ex. gnat, knee

• /b/ and /g/ were lost after nasals at the end of words

  ex. climbe

• /wr/ was simplified to /r/

  ex. write, wronge

Changes after Early Modern English

vowels changes

• In British English (RP), short /æ/ was lengthened to /æː/, long /æː/ was later changed to /ɑː/ in some environments:

  • before voiceless fricatives

    ex. path, half, laugh, after, castle, bath

  • before /n/+/s,t/

    ex. aunt, dance, plant

• Vowels following /w/ were rounded; this affected /a/ in particular

  ex. swan, watch, war

consonant changes

• Postvocalic /r/ was lost in British English (RP), causing one of the following changes in the preceding vowel:

  • the vowel is lengthened

    ex. arm, bark, card, horse, storm

  • or: the vowel is changed in quality / diphthongized

    ex. here, poor

• Postvocalic /l/ was lost before consonants in some words
  ex. palm, calm