B) palatalization

A) voicing and unvoicing of fricatives

Changes of OE consonants

Changes in unstressed syllables

Vowel lengthening

In the 9^th century short vowels were lengthened before the clusters nd, mb, ld, rd:

OE: bindan > bīndan (to bind)

climban > clīmban (to climb)

cild > cīld (child)

If nd, mb, ld, rd were followed by a third consonant the lengthening didn’t take place:

OE: cild > cīld (child), but cildru (children)

Unstressed long vowels were gradually shortened in all Germanic languages. In English this process began in early OE, when all long vowels became short and diphthongs were monophthongized in an unstressed position.

Old English script normally uses 16 consonant symbols which in modern editions are usually reproduced as b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, þ, ð.

OE had no symbol v: thus symbol f was used to represent both /f/ and / v /. The reason is that in OE / f / and / v / were members of the same phoneme. When this phoneme occurred within a word (that is not initially or finally) before a voiced sound, and wasn’t doubled or in intervocal position, it was pronounced / v /. E.g. seo f on “seven”. In all other positions it was pronounced as / f/.

There were two other such pairs in OE. There was a symbol s, but not a symbol z, and for similar reason /s / and / z/ were members of the same phoneme and the rules for their distribution were exactly the same as for / f/ and / v /. So /s/ occurred in hū s, stāna s, while /z/ occurred in no s u, bō s m.

The third pair is / ө / and /ð /. To represent these sounds scribes used runic symbols: the runic symbol þ, called “thorn”, and the symbol ð, called “eth”. They also didn’t use one of these symbols for the voiceless sound and the other – for the voiced one, but used them indiscriminately.

In all above cases, Old English had a single phoneme consisting of a pair of a voiced and voiceless allophones, where Modern English has two separate phonemes. The OE arrangement was not inherited from PG, but arose from prehistoric English by processes of assimilation.

The letter k was not normally used: / k / being represented by c (cyssan - “to kiss ”). However, when in prehistoric OE this / k / preceded a front vowel, it developed into a palatal stop instead of a velar one., that is: it was articulated farther forward in the mouth, somewhere between / k / and / t /. In the course of OE period, the differences between the velar and the palatal variants became greater, so in ModE it has developed into a palatal stop / t∫ / (as in church). Indeed it had probably reached this stage by the end of OE: OE symbol c then represented either / k / or / t∫/.

It is not always possible by looking at an OE word to know which pronunciation to use, because the vowel, following c, may also have changed since prehistoric times. Thus: cēlan “ to cool ” and cynn “ kin ” both have the velar stop / k /, even though they have front vowels, because they derived from prehistoric OE forms * kōljan and * kunni (Note: ō and u are not front vowels but back).

So, in OE the two sounds /k/ and / t∫ / were merely variants of a single phoneme: /k/ was tha allophone used before back vowels and and / t∫ / - the allophone used before front vowels; but in the course of the OE period they developed into two separate phonemes. Thus OE cinn and cynn we pronounce as ModE chin and kin.

In most positions, OE / k / also became palatalized when it followed / s /, and the combination represented by OE spelling sc normally developed into ModE /∫/. This pronunciation had been reached by the end of OE period. Examples are scip “ shi p”, scrūd “ dress ”, fisc “ fish ”. In some positions, however, / sc / remained unchanged., as in ascian “ to ask ” and tusc “ tooth ”.

OE c never represents / s /, as it does in ModE centre, la c e, c entury.

The letter h was used to represent two different phonemes. On the one hand there was a /j/ phoneme (similar to ModE yes): OE h ēar “ year ”, fæ h er “ fair ”, cæ h “ key ”. On the other hand there was a /g / phoneme (similar to ModE go): OE gōd “ good ”, gēs “ geese ”, dogga “ dog ”. When, however, this phoneme occurred undoubled between vowels, a different allophone was used: a voiced velar fricative /p/, made by narrowing the passage between the back of the tongue and the soft palate: e.g. fu h o l “ bird ”, la h u “ law ”. In middle English this velar fricatives developed into the semi-vowel / w / (ModE fowl, law).

When the /g/ phoneme was doubled, it was usually spelt like [gg], as in frogga, dogga, but sometimes the spelling [cg] was used instead, and we can find frocga, docga. At the same time the spelling [cg] was also used to represent a /dh/ phoneme, as in OE ecg “ edge ”, brycg “ bridge ”.

(B.Ilyish: sc, h and cg were palatalized before front vowels and in the final position by the end of Old English).

c) loss of consonants

In OE:

- some consonants were lost before h, f, s, Þ, and between vowels, or formed clusters ht, ft, ss or became voiceless before t: e.g. uns > ūs (нам);

- clusters fn and fm often became mn and mm accordingly (f assimilates with nasal n). E.g.: wīfman > wimman

- consonant d sometimes became voiceless, that is changed into t, mostly in verbs: e.g.: bindan (inf.) > bintst (2 pers., sing.)

- h is lost in intervocal position: e.g. tīhan > tēon (звинувачувати)

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