New Diphthongs

Long Vowels

Short Vowels

Lecture 10 – Middle English Phonetics

1. Middle English Vowel Changes.

2. Middle English Consonant Changes.

3. Rise of New Dipthongs and Related Phenomena.

4. More Phonetic Changes. French Sounds.

5. Letters and Sound Vowels in Middle English.

1.In the ME period a great change affected the entire system of vowel phonemes. To fully understand the importance of this change, we must briefly summarize the essential characteristics of the OE vowel system.

In OE word stress was fixed on the first root syllable. In ME and MrnE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation.

OE had both short and long vowel phonemes, and each could occur in any phonetic environment, that is they were absolutely independent phonemic units.

In the 10th-12th centuries, the ME vowel system was basically different. Quantity of vowels becomes dependent on their environment- to be exact, on what follows.

The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows:

1. Quantitative:

Reduction – weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. As far as the stress was mainly on the root the vowels in prefixes and suffixes got weak and underwent reduction. In unstressed position only two vowels were left – [ə] and [i]. They had never been contrasted.

Examples: ME tale [‘ta:l ə ], body [‘bod i ]

Shortening – all long vowels became short before consonant clusters. The vowels are shortened before two consonants. Except [ld, nd, mb] – before these clusters vowels remained long or if a vowel was short it became long.

Other Consonant Clusters
OE	ME
fīftiζ	fi ft y (fifty)
fēdde	fe dd e (fed)
wīsdom	wi sd om (wisdom)

Lengthening (12^th – 13^th c.) – short vowels became long:

• before clusters [ld, nd, mb];
• in 2-syllable words, only to [e, o, a] in open stressed syllable.

Clusters [ld, nd, mb]	2-syllable words
OE	ME	OE	ME
cild	chī ld (child)	mete	mēte (meat)
findan	fī nd en (find)	open	ōpen (open)
climban	clī mb en (climb)	talu	tāle (tale)

2. Qualitative:

The system of vowels in ME were no longer symmetrical as it was in OE

• [y] changed to [i] e.g. OE hyll – ME hill (hill);
• [æ] changed to [a] e.g. OE w æ s – ME was (was).

As a result:

i

e

a

o

u

• [ỹ] changed to [ī];
• [ǽ] fell together with [έ];
• [ā] changed to [ō] e.g. OE st ā n – ME sto[o:]ne (stone).

As a result:

	close	open
ī	ū	ē	ō	έ	ǿ

OE diphthongs turned into monophthongs:

OE Diphth.	ME Sounds	OE	ME
ĭě/īē à	i	l īe htan	l i ghten (lighten)
ĕŏ/ēō à	e	h eo rte	h e rte (heart)
ĕă/ēā à	æ	ēa st	ee st (east)

New diphthongs appeared due to vocalisation of [j], [γ] and [w]. These consonants turned into vowels ([i], [u] and [u] respectively) and became the glides of the new diphthongs:

i-glides	OE	ME	u-glides	OE	ME
[ei]	weζ [j ]	wey [i ] (way)	[iu]	-	-
[ai]	m æ ζ [j]	may [i ] (may)	[au]	la ζ[ γ ] u	law [u] e [‘lauə] (low)
[oi](in French loan-words)		boy, toy	[ou]	cnāw [w] an	know [u] en [‘knouən] (know)

2. English consonants proved to be more stable than vowels. Nevertheless, new sets of consonants started to appear.

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