Old English Vowel System

Word Stress

OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

DIACHRONIC CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF VOWELS

HISTORICAL PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

LECTURE 5

OE is so far removed from Mod English that one may take it for an entirely different language; this is largely due to the peculiarities of its pronunciation.

The survey of OE phonetics deals with word accentuation, the system of vowels and consonants and their origins. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. It underwent multiple changes in the pre-written periods of history, especially in Early OE. The diachronic description of phonetics those early periods will show the specifically English tendencies of development and the immediate sources of the sounds in the age of writing.

The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes in Early OE.

In OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation; in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the words, and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either. For example, the Nom. hlāford, cyning, Dat. hlāforde, cyninge.

Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had 2 stresses, chief and secondary, the chief stress being fixed on the first root-morpheme, and the secondary stress on the second. For example, Norðmonna, here the chief stress falls on the first component, while the second component gets the secondary stress; the Gen. plural ending – a is unstressed.

In words with prefixes the position of the stress varied: verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly fixed on the prefix: ā-` risan, `mis-dæd

The system of OE vowels in the 9^th and 10^th centuries is shown below:

Monophthongs

Short vowles

Long vowels

Front vowels

[i] fisc, scip [y] fyllan, pytt [e] sprecan, helpan

[i:] wīn, tīd [y:] brÿd, wÿscan [e:] fēt, tēθ

Back vowels

[u] sunu, cumin [o] folc, cos [a] faran, caru [a] – positional variants: [æ] glæd, hwæt [o] mann,(monn) cann (conn)

[u:] hūs, tūn [o:] fōt, bōk, gōd [a:] ān, wrāte

Diphthongs

[ea] healf, wearm (before 1, r + cons., and before h instead of [a]	[ea:] hēah, ēare
[eo] steora, feohtan	[eo:] deop, leoht
[io] siofun (f pronounced v in intervocal position)	[io:] stīoran
[ie] scield, nieht	[[ie:] cīese, hīeran

OE vowels underwent different kinds of alterations: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels were clearly maintained. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels was weakened or lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tended to be reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions and were often dropped in unstressed final syllables.

Changes in the system of vowels:

1) Fracture/breaking (преломление) – diphthongization of short vowels ‘a’, ‘e’ before the clusters: ‘r+ con.’, ‘l + con.’, ‘ h+ con., final ‘ h’: ærm – earm, herte – heorte, selh – seolh;

2) Gradation /ablaut: (alternation of vowels in different grammatical forms: in strong verbs: Infinitive (giban), Past. sing. (gaf), Past Pl. (gebum), Second Part. (gibans);

3) Palatalisation: diphthongisation of vowels under the influence of the initial palatal consonants ‘g’, ‘c’ (before front vowels) and the cluster ‘sc’ (all vowels): gefan – giefan, scacan – sceacan;

4) Mutation/Umlaut (перегласовка) - a change of vowel caused by partial assimilation to the following vowel: i-mutation – caused by ‘i’, ‘j’ of the following syllable: namnian – nemnan, fullian- fyllan; back/velar mutation – phonetic change caused by a back vowel (u, o, a) of the following syllable, which resulted in the diphthongisation of the preceding vowel: hefon – heofon;

5) Contraction: if, after a consonant had dropped, two vowels met inside a word, they were usually contracted into one long vowel: slahan – sleahan – sle:an;

6) Lengthening of Vowels: before ‘nd’, ‘ld, ‘mb’: bindan – bīndan; climban – clīmban

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