Phonetic changes in ME

LECTURE 8

1. Phonetic changes in the vowel system of ME.

2. Phonetic changes in the consonant system of ME.

3. Spelling changes in the period after the Norman conquest influenced by French writing habits.

In the ME period a great change affected the entire system of vowel phonemes. OE had both short and long vowel phonemes, and each of these could appear in any phonetic environment, that is, they were absolutely independent phonemic units. But in ME quantity (that is length/ shortness) became dependent on their environment - to be exact, on what follows. The situation in ME is briefly this: in some phonetic environments only short vowels can appear, while in other phonetic environments only long vowels can appear. Thus quantity ceases being a phonemically relevant feature and becomes a merely phonetic peculiarity of a vowel sound.

Phonetic changes in ME:

a) levelling (the reduction) of final unstressed vowels in ME. One of the most characteristic features of the vowel system of ME was the process of levelling (reduction) of the vowels [a], [o], [u], [i] in their final unstressed position. These vowels in their final unstressed position changed into the neutral sound. This process began in the OE period and finished in the ME period. In OE many case forms (Nom., Accus.) coincided and came to be pronounced instinctually somewhat like the neutral sound. Thus the suffix «-as» of the Nominative and Accusative cases plural of masculine nouns with the «a-stem» changes into «-es» and thus coincided in pronunciation with the suffix «-es» of the Genitive case. The suffix «- an» of the infinitive and the suffix «-on» of the Past Indefinite plural changed into «-en»: bindan > binden; tellan > tellen.

There are many view points on the question of the levelling of final unstressed vowels. Professor Arakin considered that this process was caused by the morphological structure of OE, where morphological forms of one and the same word coincided;

b) the shortening and lengthening of vowels. The fact is that the quantity of a vowel becomes dependent on its position in a word. A vowel cannot be long if it is followed by two consonants and a vowel cannot be short in an open syllable. That’s why in ME all the long vowels followed by two consonants were shortened: cepte > kĕpte (kept); fedde > fĕdde (feden); wīsdon > wisdom. The long vowels standing before the consonants ld, nd, mb remained long: bīnden, wēnde (wēnen - думать). This process had a great influence on the rhythmical structure of the language. The short vowels a, e, o in an open syllable became long: cãru > care ‘care’, talu> tãle;

The narrow vowels i and u remained as a rule unaffected by this change, and the difference between short i and long and also that between short u and long ū retained its quality as a phonemically relevant feature. In a few words, however, the narrow vowels were also lengthened in open syllables, and the narrow vowels were widened in the process, thus, i > ē, u > õ as in wikes > wēkes ‘weeks’, yfel > ifel > ēvel ‘evil’.

c) the monophtongization of OE long and short diphthongs. In ME all the OE diphthongs changed into monophthongs: ea became a passing through the stage of æ as in eald > ald ‘old’; healf > half ‘half’; earm > arm ‘poor’. In Southern dialects ea > ē eald > ēld ‘old’. All the other diphthongs gave ě: steorfan > stěrven; (to starve); siolfar > sělver (silver); gietan > gěten (to get);

d) in the ME period there appeared some new diphthongs: the sound «g» appeared after a back vowel as well as after the sounds [l], [r] > [w]. Later on these combinations developed into diphthongs: ag > aw dragan > drawen (тянуть); lg > lw galge > galwe (виселица); rg > rw morgen > morwen (утро). The soung [g] after a front vowel gave [i]: æg > ai, ay (in some dialects) dæg > dai; regn > rein; eg > ei, ey greg > grei.

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