Lecture 1 Introduction

dynamic (force, breath stress);

in Noun and Adjective stress was mainly on the prefix if there was one:

E.g. ‘misdæd (misdeed), ‘uðζenζ (escape), ‘oreald (very old)
in Verb stress was mainly on the root even if there was a prefix:
E.g. a’risan (arise), mis’faran (go astray)

4. 
   stress served to distinguish Noun from Verb (and still does):
   

E.g. ‘andswaru (N answer) – and’swarian (V answer)
‘onζin (N beginning) – on’ζinnan (V begin)
E.g. (modern English) – ‘present – pre’sent; ‘ally – al’ly.


OE Vowels
Unstressed vowels were weakened and dropped.
Stressed vowels underwent some changes:

• 
  splitting – 1 phoneme split into several allophones which later become separate phonemes
  

e.g.  a
a  ã
 æ

• 
  merging – separate phonemes become allophones of one phoneme and then disappear and are not distinguished any more as separate phonemes
  

e.g. a 
ã  a
æ 


Rise of Diphthongs
In PG there were no diphthongs. There was just a sequence of two separate vowels. Diphthongs appeared in OE: some (usually long diphthongs) – as a result of merging of two vowels:

Sounds	Diphth.	Gothic	OE
a + u 	ea:	auso	eare (ear)
e + u 	eo:	þeudans	þēoden (king)
(i + u)	(io:) (dialectal variant)	diups	dīop (deep)

others (usually short diphthongs) – as a result of the influence of the succeeding and preceding consonants (breaking of [æ, e]):

Monoph.	Diphth.	Influence	Gothic	OE
æ 	ea	before l	alls	eall (all)
æ 	ea	before h	ahtau	eahta (eight)
e 	eo	before r	herza	heorte (heart)
æ 	ea	after sk’/k’	skadus	sceadu (shade)
æ: 	ea:	after j	jâr	ζēar (year)

Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut
Mutation – a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.
Palatal mutation (or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c. and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic (that’s why later it will be used for comparison).
Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

• 
  [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;
  
• 
  new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:
  

before palatal mutation	after palatal mutation	Gothic	OE
a  o  æ 	e	badi	bedd (bed)
a: 	æ:	dails	dælan (deal)
ŏ/ō 	ĕ/ē	mōtjan	mētan (meet)
ŭ/ū 	ŷ/ỹ (labialised) (new!)	fulljan	fyllan (fill)
ĕă/ēā  ĕŏ/ēō 	ĭě/īē (new!)	eald (early OE)	ieldra (late OE)

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. 
   irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);
   
2. 
   irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);
   
3. 
   word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).
   

OE Vowel System (symmetrical, i.e each short vowel had its long variant)

	Monophthongs							+	Diphthongs
Short	ĭ	ĕ	ă	ǽ	ŏ	ŭ	ŷ		ĕŏ	ĕă	ĭě
Long	ī	ē	ā	æ	ō	ū	ỹ		ēō	ēā	īē

The length of vowels was phonologically relevant (i.e. served to distinguish words):

e.g. (OE) is (is) – īs (ice); col (coal) –cōl (cool); god (god) – gōd (good), etc.


OE Consonants
OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1. 
   Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])
   

[ð] 	[d]	rauðr (Icelandic)	rēad (OE) (red)
[v] 	[b]	-	-
[γ] 	[g]	guma (Gothic)	ζuma (OE) (man)

2. 
   Voicing (the process when a voiceless consonant becomes voiced in certain positions) – intervocally and between a vowel and a voiced consonant or sonorant
   

[f, , h, s]  [v, ð, g, z] e.g. wulfos (Gothic) – wulf[v]as (OE) (wolves)

3. 
   Rhotacism (a process when [z] turns into [r])
   

e.g. maiza (Gothic) – māra (OE) (more)

4. 
   Gemination (a process of doubling a consonant) – after a short vowel, usually happened as a result of palatal mutation (e.g. fullan (OE) (fill), settan (OE) (set), etc.).
   

5. 
   Palatalisation of Consonants (a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel
   

[g, γ, k, h]  [g’, γ’, k’, h’] e.g. c[k’]ild (OE) (child); ecζ[gg’] (OE) (edge), etc.

6. 
   Loss of Consonants:
   
   • 
     sonorants before fricatives (e.g. fimf (Gothic) – fīf (OE) (five));
     
   • 
     fricatives between vowels and some plosives (e.g. sæζde (early OE) – sæde (late OE) (said));
     
   • 
     loss of [j] – as a result of palatal mutation (see examples above);
     
   • 
     loss of [w] (e.g. case-forms of nouns: sæ (Nominative) – sæwe (Dative) (OE) (sea).
     

OE Consonant System
See table 9 on p. 90 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева (copies).
Lecture 11
The Development of Vowel System in Middle English and New English


Word Stress/Accent:
In ME and NE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation.
Recessive tendency – stress in loan-words moved closer to the beginning of the word (e.g. in French words the stress is usually placed on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable, but the stress in the words of the French origin that penetrated into English has moved to the beginning of the word).
E.g. ME vertu [ver’tju:] – NE virtue [‘vз:t∫ə]
Rhythmic tendency – regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables (3 or more) that creates rhythm and has led to the appearance of the secondary stress.
E.g. ME diso’beien – NE ,diso’bei


Vowels
English vowels proved to be more changeable than consonants. Long vowels proved to be more changeable than short ones.


Middle English
The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows:

1. 
   Quantitative:
   

Reduction – weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. As far as the stress was mainly on the root the vowels in prefixes and suffixes got weak and underwent reduction. In unstressed position only two vowels were left – [ə] and [i]. They had never been contrasted.
E.g. ME tale [‘ta:lə], body [‘bodi]
In NE sound [ə] (schwa) was dropped at the end of the words but the letter e was left in spelling to show the length of the preceding vowel.


Shortening – all long vowels became short before consonant clusters (NB!! except [ld, nd, mb] – before these clusters vowels remained long or if a vowel was short it became long)
E.g.

Other Consonant Clusters
OE	ME
fīftiζ	fifty (fifty)
fēdde	fedde (fed)
wīsdom	wisdom (wisdom)

Lengthening (12^th – 13^th c.) – short vowels became long:

• 
  before clusters [ld, nd, mb];
  
• 
  in 2-syllable words, only to [e, o, a] in open stressed syllable
  

E.g.

Clusters [ld, nd, mb]