V. Old English consonants

IV. Palatal mutation

III.Breaking

II. Changes in Old English vowel phonemes

Monophthongs diphthongs

i - i: - writan - writen ea – ea: ceas - eald

write writen chose – old

The changes that took place in the prehistoric period of the development of the English language and which explain the difference between Old English and Common Germanic vowels were of two types: assimilative and independent changes.

Independent changes do not depend upon the environment in which the given sound was found. They cannot be explained, but they are merely stated.

Common Germanic Old English

ai > a

Assimilative changes are explained by the phonetic position of the sound in the word and the change can and must be explained. Among the many phonetic assimilative changes which took place in the prehistoric period of the development of the English language and which account for the discrepancy between the Old English and the Common Germanic vowel system the most important are breaking and palatal mutation.

The process of braking took place in the 6^th century. It affected two vowels – [æ] and [e] when they were followed by the consonants [r], [i], [h] generally followed another consonant.

The resulting vowel was a diphthong (hence name “ breaking” – a monophthong “ was broken” into a diphthong), consequently the process may be summed up as diphthongization of short vowels before certain consonant clusters.

e > ea before r+ consonant herte>heorte (hart)

The qualitative change of Old English vowels that experts call palatal mutation, or i- mutation, occurred somewhere during the 6^th-7^th centuries. The process affected Germanic words where a vowel in stressed syllable was immediately followed by the sound [i] or [j] in the next syllable. Almost all vowels became further forward and higher, or more palatal and narrow. This may be described as a kind of vowel harmony – a natural process affecting many modern languages, the vowels mutate, the change being caused by their partial assimilation to the following vowel.

o > e ofstian > efstan (strength)

æ >e tælian > tellan (to tell)

The Old English consonant system consisted of some 14 consonant phonemes and manifested the following peculiarities.

1. The relatively small number of consonant phonemes – only 14 ones.

2. The absence of affricates and fricatives, consonants which we now find in the language.

3. Dependence of the quality of the phoneme upon its environment in the word.

4. The system of consonant phonemes that we observe in Old English involves certain peculiarities that are typical of the majority of Germanic dialects which set them (those Germanic dialects and Old English among them) apart from the majority of the Indo- European languages. Those peculiarities were mainly accounted for by two linguists – Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner, hence they are generally referred to as “ Grimm’s law” (or the first Germanicconsonant shift) and “ Verner law”.

VI. Grimm’s law & Verner’s law

Grimm’s law explain the correspondence between certain groups of Germanic and non- Germanic consonants. Those correspondences involve three sets of Germanic consonants, consequently they generally speak of three stages of Grimm’s law. But we will speak here about only one stage which is the simplest to explain and the most consistent - the Germanic consonant [f], [ө], [h] and the corresponding consonants [p], [t], [k] we find in similar phonetic environment.

The essence of this stage of the first shift is the following:

The voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t], [k] of Indo- European languages other than Germanic shifted in Germanic languages into the voiceless fricative consonants [f], [ө], [h]. It was a non-assimilative change which presumably affected Germanic languages at the beginning of the first millennium AD.

Russian Greek Old English

пена fama (foam)

три өrie (three)

kardia heort (heart)

octo eahta (eight)

VII Verner’s law.

It should be noted that these correspondences are not absolutely clear in all the cases. Some more complicated phenomena were formulated in the so-called Verner’s law. The Germanic voiceless fricative consonants [f], [ө], [h] which appeared due to Grim’s law later became voiced if they were found after unstressed vowels. Compare:

Latin Old English

Pater fæder

ө> changed in accordance with Grimm’s law, but as the stress in the word “fæder” in the prehistoric period was on the second syllable the voiceless fricative consonant [ө] became voiced [ð]; later the voiced fricative consonant [ð] underwent “hardening” and became [d].

cweð – cwedon (say)

Consequently the whole process of the change may be presented in the following way:

E.[t] > Com.Germ.[ө] > [ð] > [d]

Grimm’s law Verner’s law

The change referred to as “Verner’s law” affected a fourth consonant – [s]. The [s] was also voiced after unstressed vowels – [s] >[z], later consonant [z] became [r] – the change [z]>[r] is called rhotasizm.

ceosan – curon (choose)

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