C. Development of diphthongs

B. Splitting of [a] and [a:] in Early OE

A. Changes of vowels in Early Old English.

The number of vowel sounds in OE is 15. There were 8 short and 7 long vowels. OE also had a vowel sound [a] intermediate between [a] and [o] which occurred only before n or m and was usually represented in spelling by means of a or o, e.g. mann, monn ‘man’; land, lond ‘land’.

Generally, the development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. The change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the “empty boxes” of the system or introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together.

аллофон (аллофона) (от греч. allos — другой + phone — звук). Конкретная реализация фонемы. Аллофоны — это группа звуков, в которых проявляется данная фонема в зависимости от места в слове, соседства с другими звуками, ударяемости или безударности гласного и т. д.

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE: they were fronted, and in the process of fronting, they split into several sounds.

Change illustrated	Examples
PG OE	Other OE languages	OE	NE
æ   a o, ɑ̃   a     æ: ɑ: o:	Gt þata OIcel dagr Gt manna O Icel land Gt magan Gt dagos   OHighGerman dar OHG slafen OHG mano OIcel m á naðr	pæt dæʒ mon land maʒan daʒas   pær slæpan mōna mōnap	that day man land may days   there sleep moon mouth

The principal regular direction of the change – [a] > [æ] and [a:] > [æ:] – is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]. The other directions can be interpreted as positional deviations or restrictions to this trend: short [a] could change to [o] or [ā] and long [a:] became [o:] before a nasal; the preservation of the short [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

Change illustrated	Examples
PG OE	Other OE languages	OE	NE
a+i a:   e+i i:   a+u ea:     e+u eo:   i+u io:	Gt stains Gt ains Gt meins Gt reisan O Icel austr Gt auso Gt augo Gt þiudans Gt kiusan Gt diups	stān ān mīn rīsan ēast ēare ēaʒe þēoden cēosan dēop, dīop	stone one mine, my rise east ear eye ‘king’ choose deep

The PG diphthongs – [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] – underwent regular independent changes in Early OE; they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment. The diphthongs with the i -glide were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:], respectively; the diphthongs in –u were reflected as long diphthongs [io:], [eo:] and [ea:].

Дата добавления: 2014-01-20