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The changes in the sound system of the period were significant. The process of the leveling of endings continued, and the most significant, of course, Great vowel shift.
1) Loss of unstressed e. We can observe total disappearance of neutral sound Ə marked by letter e in the endings (it was preserved and even pronounced more distinctly like [i] only when two identical consonants were found in the root and in the endings) (dresses, stresses, wicked)
2) The sound e before r hanged into a: (sterre – star)
3) Great Vowel Shift (GVS).
Most scholars agree that it was the most significant event which influenced Modern English emergence. GVS was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750 (the years are not the same in all the sources: some are giving 1400 – 1600) for reasons that are not entirely well known. Of course the surprising speed and the exact cause of the shift are continuing mysteries in linguistics and cultural history, but some theories attach the cause to the mass migration to the southeast part of England after the Black Death, where the difference in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a standardised middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city. Another explanation highlights the language of the ruling class: the medieval aristocracy had spoken French but by the early fifteenth century they were using English. This may have caused a change to the "prestige accent" of English. Whatever the reason was, it happened. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. GVS is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
The essence of GVS is certainly connected with the pronunciation. For those of us who are “into it”, there is one spelling in particular that deserves a lot of attention – the “ough” combination. There are at least ten pronunciations for this combination of letters, ranging from “cough” to “through” to “dough” to “bough” in most common usage. Each of these was standardized at a different time during the Great Vowel Shift, causing the confusion that we have today. GVS explains why police and polite so close in spelling are so different in pronouncing. Here is the simplified table.
| ME VOWEL (ca. 1400) | EME VOWEL (ca. 1600) | PDE VOWEL (after 1800) |
| /i:/ | /'i/ | /aI/time |
| /e/ | /i/ | /i/meet |
| /e:/ | /e/ | /i/east |
| /a:/ | /e/ | /ei/take |
| /ô:/ | /o/ | /o/stone |
| /o/ | /u/ | /u/tool |
| /u/ | /'u/ | /aU/noun |
PDE – Present Day English
GVS affected all long vowels in native as well as borrowed before it words. Though some borrowed words preserve i: and u: in the open syllable (routine)
In general as compared to the Great vowel shift other vowel changes of the NE period seem few and insignificant. In ME and NE the development of new long monophthongs and diphthongs took place. First of all because of the vocalization resulted from the development of [r]. (Verba, 166)
Consonants (3d lecture)
OE From Germanic philology you remember the First Consonant shift (Grimm’s law) appearance of voiceless fricatives. Their development continues in OE.
1. So voicing of fricatives in intervocal position f>v (ofer-over; wīf – wīfe, wīfa wife-wives); θ > ð (ōðer – other); s>z>r (voiced sibilant (шипящий) z was very unstable in OE and very soon changed into r. The process is called rotacism. (wesun –weren). Suffix iza used to form the degrees of comparison and now has the variant er.
2. Palatalization of the sound k’’, sk’ and kg’ (marked as c, sc and sƷ) k’ >tʃ (cild – child); sk’ > ʃ (sceal – shall); kg’>dƷ (brycƷ- bridge); back γ sound before palatal consonants turned into j – Ʒear (year).
3. Assimilation before t. The sound t when it was preceded by a number of consonants changed the quality of a preceding sound. (e.g. stefn→stemn /fn >mn/ etc.)
4. Loss of consonants in certain positions. The sounds n and m were lost before h. (bronhte – brōhte – brought). Other examples of similar loss was the loss of Ʒ before d and n. (sæƷde – sǣde (said))
5. Metathesis (метатеза) of r. (cons +r+vowel→cons+vowel+r brunnan-burnan (burn)).
6. West Germanic gemination (удваивание) of consonants (salian – sellan –sell).
ME:
English consonants were on the whole far more stable than vowels. A large number of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. Thus we can assume that the sonorants [m, n, l], plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been subjected to any noticeable changes. The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the growth of new sets of sounds, - affricates and sibilants.
The writing system changed dramatically in Middle English:
NE: In many cases the change is resulted in the loss of consonants in certain positions. The sound l was lost in combination before k, m, f, v
Talk, palm, half.
The sound l was preserved in the words of Latin origin such as resolve. It was also lost after a vowel before d in should and others.
Sound b was dropped in combination mb at the end of the words climb, lamb
G, k at the beginning of the word knight, gnome
W before a consonant (mainly r) and in unstressed syllables write, answer.
Qualitative change of consonants is illustrated by voicing of fricatives.
s→z – dessert, resemble
f→v – of
tʃ→dƷ – knowledge
Some sounds mainly in the borrowed words merged with the preceding consonant forming a sibilant:
Sj, tj - ʃ Asia, session
Zj – Ʒ collision, division
Tj - tʃ question, nature
Dj – dƷ soldier, procedure
These are the most noticeable changes in consonants.
Noun (4th lecture)
The morphology of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected.
Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formation of plural of Present-day English too. For example, why foot-feet but boot – boots.
Nouns had categories of number, gender and case. Gender is not actually a grammatical category in a strict sense of the word (except for the notions mann, fæder, brōðor – masculine and modor, sweostor – feminine; wīfman is masculine because the send element of the compound is masculine.) for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender; but case and number had a set of endings. There are 2 numbers – singular/plural – There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.
§ The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence, for example se cyning means 'the king'. It was also used for direct address. Adjectives in the predicate (qualifying a noun on the other side of 'to be') were also in the nominative.
§ The accusative indicated the direct object of the sentence, for example Æþelbald lufode þone cyning means "Æþelbald loved the king", where Æþelbald is the subject and the king is the object. Already the accusative had begun to merge with the nominative; it was never distinguished in the plural, or in a neuter noun.
§ The genitive case indicated possession, for example the þæs cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship". It also indicated partitive (разделительный) nouns.
§ The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence, for example hringas þæm cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.
§ The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example lifde sweorde, "he lived by the sword", where sweorde is the instrumental form of sweord. During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.
There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, hring 'one ring') or plural (for example, hringas 'many rings').
In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes which determined what inflections (флексия, окончание) were taken by the nouns. The nouns in OE are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups.
The strong declension.
The strong noun paradigm declines for case, gender and singular/plural.
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | -- | -as | -- | -u / -- | -u / -- | -a, -e |
| Genitive | -es | -a | -es | -a | -e | -a |
| Dative | -e | -um | -e | -um | -e | -um |
| -Accusative | -- | -as | -- | -u / -- | -e | -a, -e |
Stone- stān (m) Ship – scip (n) tale – talu (f)
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | stān | stānas | scip | scipu / scip | talu | tala, |
| Genitive | stānes | stāna | scipes | scipa | tale | tala |
| Dative | stāne | stānum | scipe | scipum | tale | talum |
| Accusative | stān | stānas | scip | scipu / scip | tale | tala |
Of course there were some peculiarities in this declension. If you want to find them out you should bury yourself in the books.
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