Diphthongisation

Breaking

Fracture

Contraction

After a consonant had dropped, two vowels met inside a word. They were usually contracted into one long vowel. The main types of contraction are the following:

1. ah + vowel > eah + vowel > ēa. This occurs in a few class VI strong verbs: slahan > sleahan > slēan “slay”, ðwahan > ðweahan > ðwēan “wash”

2. eh or ih + vowel > eo: sehan > seohan > seon “see”, Zefehan > Zefeohan > Zefeon “rejoice”;

tīhan > tēohan > tēon “accuse”

3. oh +vowel > ō: fōhan > fōn

4. ōn “catch”, hōhan > h ōn “hang”. Long æ, long o and diphthongs, absorb the following vowel: sæe > sæ “sea” (dat. sing.), ēae > ēa “river” (dat. sing.).

OE Fracture (Breaking) and Diphthongisation ( Assimilative Vowel Changes)

The tendency to assimilative vowel change, characteristic of later PG and of the OG languages, accounts for many modifications of vowels in Early OE. Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diph­thongs.

It is the vowels -a and -e that undergo fracture.

a> ea before clusters “r+consonant”, “l+consonant”, “h+consonant”, and before h final:

xrm>earm, “arm”, xld > eald “old”, xhta > eahta “eight”, sxh > seah “saw” (past tense of “see”)

e > eo before the clusters “r+ consonant”, “lc, lh, h+ consonant” and h final:

herte > heorte, “heart”, melcan > meolcan “milk”, selh > seolh “seal” (sea animal), feh > foeh “cattle”, “property”.

Fracture is most consistently carried out in the West Saxon dialect. In other dialects, such as Mercian, fracture in many cases does not occur; then the vowel x becomes a, and the resulting forms are: arm, ald, ahta, sah.

E.g .: WS tealde, Mercian talde (NE told).

OHG nah Gt ahtau OHG fehtan

WS neah WS eahta WS feohtan

NE near NE eight NE fight

Diphthongisation of vowels could also be caused by preceding consonants: a glide arose after a palatal consonant as a sort of transition to the succeeding vowel.

After the palatal consonants [k’], [sk;] and [j] short and long [e] and [x] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, e.g. Early OE scxmu > OE sceamu (shame). Later the stress shifted to the first element, which turned into a nucleous of the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs (falling diphthongs). This process, known as “diphthongization after palatal consonants” occurred some time in the 6-th century.

See the following table:

Conditions	EOE OE	OG and OE	West Saxon	NE
sk’   After k	i a	i ea	OHG skd OHG scal Gt skadus	sield sceal sceadu	sield sall shade
e a	ie ea	Lat. cerasus Lat. castra	cieres, syrs ceaster	cherries chester
j	a i	ea: ie	OHG jâr Gt Ziban	Zēar Ziefan	year give

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