The Old English vowels (the boldly printed sounds are labialised)

OE Vowel System.

OE Word Stress.

OE Phonetics

Lecture 3

The Old English Period:

The studies of the OE phonetic system are based upon Old English written records. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. There was no gap between OE reading and spelling.

It underwent multiple changes in the pre-writing periods of history, especially in Early OE.

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

The OE word stress was dynamic (force): in OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation. 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 word and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either.

e.g. Nom. case hlaford (lord) [‘xla:vord], cyninz (king) [‘kyning]

Dat. case. hlaforde [‘xla:vorde], cyninze [‘kyniŋge]

Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, usually had two stresses: chief and secondary. The chief stress is fixed on the first root-morpheme.

e.g. Norąmanna (Northmen) [‘normona]

In words with prefixes verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix.

e.g. verb ‘ā-risan (“arise”)

adjective ‘or-eald (“very old”)

noun ‘mis-dæd (“misdeed”)

If the words were derived from the same root, word stress, together with other means, served to distinguish the noun from the verb.

e.g. verb and-‘swarian - noun ‘and - swaru (“answer”)

verb for – ‘weorþ-an - noun ‘forwyrd (“perish”,“destruction”)

The OE vowel system displayed an obvious tendency towards a symmetrical, balanced arrangement. It can be proved by the fact of existence a corresponding short vowel to almost every long vowel. However, the appearance of the nasalised [a] in the set of short vowels tended to break the balance.

Table 1.

	FRONT	CENTRAL	BACK
CLOSE	i: y: i y io:		u: u
HALF-CLOSE	e: eo: ea: e → eo		o: o
OPEN	æ ← ε∂   æ:	→ a ← a:	כ

As it can be studied from Table 1 there were such chief phonetic oppositions in the OE vowel system: vowels were contrasted through quantity as long to short and were further distinguished within their sets of qualitative differences as monophthongs and diphthongs, open and close, front and back, labialised and non-labialised.

The OE vowel system had its peculiar features:

1) it was highly developed (as Table1 shows);

2) labialised vowels could be both back and front;

3) there were many diphthongs, their both parts were pronounced clear and fully;

4) diphthongs were descending (falling): their first syllables were stressed;

5) the rate of oral speech in OE was slower than the speed of modern speech: it can be proved by the fact of full vocalism in the system of diphthongs (повноголоснi дифтонги).

All the vowels listed in Table1 could occur in stressed position. In unstressed syllables only five monophthongs could be found: i, e, a, o, u.

3. Changes of OE Vowels:

a) Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English.

Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took place in English at every period of history.

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. All phonetic changes strictly conformed to the general pattern: 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.

Stressed vowels in OE underwent a number of considerable changes both independent and dependent. As a result of these changes the number of vowels in stressed position grew as compared with the PG vowel system.

Scheme 1

Changes of Stressed Vowels in OE

↓ ↓

Independent Changes Dependent Changes

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

Development Development Accommodation Assimilation

of Monophthongs of Diphthongs / \ / \

Breaking Diphthongisation Palatal Mutation Fronting

The OE back vowels were more stable than the front ones. The OE front vowels underwent different changes very frequently. Especially the OE short front vowels changed very often.

1) Independent Changes.

The PG monophthongs and diphthongs underwent regular independent changes in Early OE: they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment.

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.

The principal regular direction of the change is the following: [a]>[æ] and [a:]>[æ:]. This type of changes is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]:

e.g. Gt þata OE þæt NE that

OHG dâr OE þǽr NE there

Sometimes the PG [a] and [a:] could change to other sounds: [a] > [o], [a:] > [o:]. But these directions can be interpreted as changes under the influence of the succeeding nasal.

e.g. Gt mann OE mon NE man

OHG mano OE mona NE moon

The short [a] from PG [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

e.g. Gt magan OE maзan NE may

Scheme 2

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

> æ independent >æ: independent

a { >o, a before a nasal a:{

>a before the syllable with a >o: before a nasal

As the result of the independent changes in OE the PG diphthongs* with the i-glide [ei, ai] were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:] respectively.

The diphthongs in - u [iu, eu, au] were reflected as long diphthongs [io:, eo:, ea:]

e.g. PG a+i > OE a: Gt ains OE ān NE one

i+u > OE io: Gt diups OE dēop, dīop NE deep

*Some scholars interpret these PG diphthongs [ei, ai, eu, au, ou] as sequence of two independent monophthongs. The process of fronting is considered to take place in the 5th c.

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