Middle English
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved only as a
written language
A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will pick up spoken language or sign language by exposure even i ...
. Nevertheless, there is a very large
text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical a ...
of Middle English. The dialects of Middle English vary greatly over both time and place, and in contrast with Old English and Modern English, spelling was usually phonetic rather than conventional. Words were generally spelled according to how they sounded to the person writing a text, rather than according to a formalised system that might not accurately represent the way the writer's dialect was pronounced, as Modern English is today.
The Middle English speech of the city of
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
in the late 14th century (essentially, the speech of
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
) is used as the standard Middle English dialect in teaching and when specifying "the" grammar or phonology of Middle English. It is this form that is described below, unless otherwise indicated.
In the rest of the article, abbreviations are used as follows:
Sound inventory
The
surface sounds of Chaucerian Middle English (whether
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s or
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s) are shown in the tables below.
Consonants
1. The exact nature of Middle English ''r'' is unknown. It may have been an alveolar approximant
The voiced alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants is , a lowercase letter ''r'' rotated 18 ...
, as in most Modern English accents, an alveolar tap Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit.
Uses in anatomy and zoology
* Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs
** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte
** Alveolar duct
** Alveolar macrophage
* M ...
or an alveolar trill
The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. ...
. This article uses indiscriminately.
Consonant allophones
The sounds marked in parentheses in the table above are
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s:
* is an allophone of occurring before and
**For example, ''ring'' ('ring') is ; did not occur alone word-finally in Middle English, unlike in Modern English.
* are allophones of in
coda
Coda or CODA may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* Movie coda, a post-credits scene
* ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television
*''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
position after front and back vowels, respectively. The evidence for the allophone after front vowels is indirect, as it is not indicated in the orthography. Nevertheless, there was historically a fronting of to and of * to
(and later, ) after front vowels in pre-Old English, which makes it very likely. Moreover, in late Middle English (post-Chaucer), sometimes became (''tough'', ''cough'') but only after back vowels, never after front vowels. That is explained if the allophone is assumed to have sometimes become but that the allophone never did. For example, ''night'' ('night') is , and ''taught'' ('taught') is . (See
H-loss, below.)
*Based on evidence from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
and
Modern English, and apparently had velarised allophones and or similar ones in some positions (perhaps all positions in the case of ).
Voiced fricatives
In Old English, , , were allophones of , , , respectively, occurring between
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s or
voiced consonant
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
s. That led to many alternations: ''hūs'' ('house') vs. ''hūses'' ('of a house') ; ''wīf'' ('woman') vs. ''wīfes'' ('of a woman') . In Middle English, voiced allophones become phonemes, and they are solidly established in Modern English as separate phonemes by several sources:
#Borrowings from foreign languages, especially
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
, and
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
, which introduced sounds where they had not occurred: modern ''fine'' vs. ''vine'' (both borrowings from French); ''ether'' (from Greek) vs. ''either'' (native).
#Dialect mixture between Old English dialects (like
Kentish) that voiced initial fricatives and the more standard dialects that did not. Compare ''fat'' vs. ''vat'' (both with ''f-'' in standard
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
) and ''fox'' vs. ''vixen'' (
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''fox'' vs. ''fyxen'', from
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
vs. ).
#Analogical changes that levelled former alternations: ''grass, grasses, grassy'' and ''glass, glasses, glassy'' with replacing the original between vowels (but ''to graze'' and ''to glaze'', still with , originally derived from ''grass'' and ''glass'', respectively). Contrast ''wife'' vs. ''wives''; ''greasy'', still with a in some dialects (such as that of
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
) and ''staff'', with two plurals, analogical ''staffs'' and inherited ''staves''.
#Loss of final , resulting in voiced fricatives at the end of a word where only voiceless fricatives had occurred. That is the source of the modern distinctions ''house'' vs. ''to house'', ''teeth'' vs. ''to teethe'', ''half'' vs. ''to halve''.
#Reduction of double consonants to single consonants. That explains the contrast between ''kiss, to kiss'' (Old English ''coss, cyssan'', with a double ''s'') vs. ''house, to house'' with in the verb (Old English ''hūs, hūsian'', with a single ''s'').
#A
Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
effect that introduced the voiced fricative /ð/ instead of original /θ/ at the beginning of unstressed function words. Contrast ''this'' with initial vs. ''thistle'' with initial .
#A sound change that caused fricatives to be voiced when preceded by a fully unstressed syllable. This change is reflected in the modern pronunciation of the endings spelt ''-s'' (the noun plural ending, the '
Saxon genitive
In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners (also called possessive adjectives when corresponding to a pronoun) or of nouns.
For nouns, noun ph ...
' ending and the ending for 3rd person present indicative), which now have phonemic shape -, having developed in Middle English from - to - and then, after the deletion of the unstressed vowel, to - (e.g. ''halls'', ''tells'' with from earlier ''halles'', ''telles''). The sound change also affects function words ending in original - that are normally unstressed. Contrast ''this'' with vs. ''is'' with ; ''off'' with vs. ''of'' with , originally the same word; ''with'' with in many varieties of English vs. ''pith'' with .
The status of the sources in Chaucer's Middle English is as follows:
*The first three sources (borrowing, dialect mixture, analogy) were already established.
*As indicated by versification, the loss of final was normal in Chaucer's time before a vowel-initial word and optional elsewhere; it is assumed that it is a poetic relic and that the loss of final was already complete in spoken English (a similar situation to Modern French; see ''
e muet'').
*The reduction of double consonants was apparently about to occur.
*The sandhi effects on unstressed function words occurred somewhat later, in the transition to Modern English.
The strongest distinction was between and because of the large number of borrowings from
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
. It is also the only distinction that is consistently indicated in spelling, as and respectively. sometimes appears as , especially in borrowings from Greek and sometimes as . Both and are spelled .
Vowels
Monophthongs
Middle English had a distinction between
close-mid and
open-mid long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
but no corresponding distinction in short vowels. Although the behavior of
open syllable lengthening
Open syllable lengthening, in linguistics, is the process by which short vowels become long in an open syllable. It occurs in many languages at a phonetic or allophonic level, and no meaningful distinction in length is made. However, as it became ...
seems to indicate that the short vowels were open-mid in quality, according to Lass, they were close-mid. (There is some direct documentary evidence: in early texts, open-mid was spelled , but both and were spelled .) Later, the short vowels were in fact lowered to become open-mid vowels, as is shown by their values in Modern English.
The
front rounded vowel
A front rounded vowel is a particular type of vowel that is both front and rounded.
The front rounded vowels defined by the IPA include:
* , a close front rounded vowel (or "high front rounded vowel")
* , a near-close front rounded vowel (or "n ...
s existed in the southwest dialects of Middle English, which developed from the standard
Late West Saxon dialect of
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London. The close vowels and are direct descendants of the corresponding Old English vowels and were indicated as . (In the standard dialect of Middle English, the sounds became and ; in
Kentish, they became and .) may have existed in learned speech in loanwords from Old French, also spelled , but, as it merged with , becoming in Modern English, rather than , it can be assumed that was the vernacular pronunciation that was used in French-derived words.
The mid-front rounded vowels likewise had existed in the southwest dialects but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London. They were indicated as . Sometime in the 13th century, they became unrounded and merged with the normal front mid vowels. They derived from the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
diphthongs and . There is no direct evidence that there was ever a distinction between open-mid and close-mid , but it can be assumed because of the corresponding distinction in the unrounded mid front vowels. would have derived directly from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, and derived from the open syllable lengthening of short , from the Old English short diphthong .
The quality of the short open vowel is unclear. Early in Middle English, it presumably was central since it represented the coalescence of the Old English vowels and , and at the time of
Middle English breaking, it could not have been a front vowel since rather than was introduced after it. During the Early Modern English period, it was fronted, in most environments, to in southern England, and it and even closer values are found in the contemporary speech of southern England, North America and the southern hemisphere: it remains in much of Northern England, Scotland and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the long open vowel, which developed later because of open syllable lengthening, was . It was gradually fronted, to successively , and , in the 16th and the 17th centuries.
[Dobson (1968), p. 594]
Diphthongs
1The
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
sequences , produced late Middle English , apparently after passing through early Middle English : OE ''grōwan'' ('grow') > LME . However, early Middle English produced by Middle English breaking became late Middle English : OE ''tōh'' (tough') > EME > LME . Apparently, early became before the occurrence of Middle English breaking, which generated new occurrences of , which later became .
All of the above diphthongs came about within the Middle English era. Old English had a number of diphthongs, but all of them had been reduced to monophthongs in the transition to Middle English. Middle English diphthongs came about by various processes and at various time periods. Diphthongs tended to change their quality over time. The changes above occurred mostly between early and late Middle English. Early Middle English had a distinction between
open-mid and
close-mid diphthongs, and all of the close-mid diphthongs had been eliminated by late Middle English.
The following processes produced the above diphthongs:
*Reinterpretation of Old English sequences of a vowel followed by , > , or :
**OE ''weġ'' ('way') > EME > LME
**OE ''dæġ'' ('day') > ME
*Middle English breaking before (, )
*Borrowing, especially from Old French
Phonological processes
The following sections describe the major phonological processes occurring between written
Late West Saxon
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
(the standard written form of
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
) and the end of Middle English, conventionally dated to around 1500 AD.
Homorganic lengthening
Late in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, vowels were lengthened before certain clusters: , , , , . Later on, the vowels in many of these words were shortened again, giving the appearance that no lengthening happened; but evidence from the ''
Ormulum
The ''Ormulum'' or ''Orrmulum'' is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by an Augustinian canon named Orm (or Ormin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonemic orthog ...
'' indicates otherwise. For details see
Phonological history of Old English: Vowel lengthening.
Stressed vowel changes
Late West Saxon
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
(the standard written form of
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
) included matched pairs of short and long vowels, including seven pairs of pure vowels (monophthongs), , and two pairs of height-harmonic diphthongs, and . Two additional pairs of diphthongs, and , existed in earlier Old English but had been reduced to and , respectively, by late Old English times.
In the transition to Middle English, this system underwent major changes, eliminating the diphthongs and leaving only one pair of low vowels, but with a vowel distinction appearing in the long mid vowels:
*The diphthongs simplified to and , respectively. Subsequently, the low vowels were modified as follows:
** and merged to a single central vowel .
** and rose to and , respectively.
*The diphthongs and (as in OE ''frēond'' 'friend') respectively simplified to new front-round vowels and (yielding /frøːnd/ 'friend'). Everywhere except in the southwest, and were soon respectively unrounded to and (yielding Middle English ''freend'' /freːnd/ 'friend'); in the southwest, it took 200 or 300 years for this process to take place, and in the meantime the sounds were spelled in texts from the southwest.
*The front-rounded vowels and unrounded to and , respectively, everywhere but in the southwest (former West Saxon area) and southeast (former
Kentish area).
**In the southwest, the front-rounded vowels and remained, and were spelled .
**In the southeast, the vowels had already been unrounded to and , respectively, in Old English times, and remained as such in Middle English.
This left an asymmetric system consisting of five short vowels and six long vowels , with additional front-rounded vowels in the southwest area. Some symmetry was restored by
open syllable lengthening
Open syllable lengthening, in linguistics, is the process by which short vowels become long in an open syllable. It occurs in many languages at a phonetic or allophonic level, and no meaningful distinction in length is made. However, as it became ...
, which restored a long low vowel .
Reduction and loss of unstressed vowels
Unstressed vowels were gradually confused in late
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, although the spelling lagged behind, due to the existence of a standardized spelling system. By early Middle English, all unstressed vowels were spelt , probably representing . Also in late Old English, final unstressed became ; during the Middle English period, this final was dropped when it was part of an inflectional syllable (but remained when part of the root, e.g. ''seven'', or in derivational endings, e.g. ''written''). Around Chaucer's time, final was dropped; judging from inflectional evidence, this occurred first when the following word began with a vowel. A century or so later, unstressed also dropped in the plural and genitive ending ''-es'' (spelled ''-s'' in Modern English) and the past ending ''-ed''.
These changes steadily effaced most inflectional endings, e.g.:
*OE > ME > LME > NE ''meet''
*OE > ME > LME > NE ''week''
*OE > ME > LME > NE ''name''
In the last two examples, the stressed vowel was affected by
open-syllable lengthening.
Vocalization of and development of new diphthongs
The sound , which had been a post-vocalic allophone of , became vocalized to . This occurred around the year 1200.
A new set of diphthongs developed from combinations of vowel+ (either from or from pre-existing ) or vowel+ (from pre-existing ), and also due to borrowing from French – see
Diphthongs
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
above.
Breaking
During the 12th or 13th century, a vowel was inserted between a front vowel and a following (pronounced in this context), and a vowel was inserted between a back vowel and a following (pronounced in this context). Short was treated as a back vowel in this process (the long equivalent did not occur in the relevant context). See
H-loss, below.
Open-syllable lengthening
Around the 13th century,
short vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
s were
lengthened in an open syllable (i.e. when followed by a single consonant that in turn is followed by another vowel). In addition, non-low vowels were lowered: > , > , > , > . This accounts, for example, for the vowel difference between ''staff'' and the alternative plural ''staves'' (Middle English ''staf'' vs. ''stāves'', with open-syllable lengthening in the latter word). This process was restricted in the following ways:
#It did not occur when two or more syllables followed, due to the opposing process of
trisyllabic laxing
Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two or more syllables, at least the first of which is un ...
.
#It only occasionally applied to the high vowels and , e.g. OE ''wudu'' > ME > ''wood''; OE ''wicu'' > ME > ''week''. Most instances of and remained as such, e.g. OE ''hnutu'' > NE ''nut'', OE ''riden'' > NE ''ridden''.
The effects of open-syllable lengthening and
trisyllabic laxing
Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two or more syllables, at least the first of which is un ...
often led to differences in the stem vowel between singular and plural/genitive. Generally these differences were regularized by analogy in one direction or another, but not in a consistent way:
*ME > NE ''path, paths'', but ME > NE ''whale, whales''
*ME > NE ''cradle, cradles'', but ME > NE ''saddle, saddles''
Trisyllabic laxing
In late
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, vowels were shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed. Later in Middle English this process was expanded, and applied to all vowels when two or more syllables followed. This led to the Modern English variations between ''divine'' vs. ''divinity'', ''school'' vs. ''scholarly'', ''grateful'' vs. ''gratitude'', etc. In some cases, later changes have led to apparently anomalous results, e.g. ''south'' vs. ''southern'' with only two syllables (but at the time that trisyllabic laxing applied). This change is still fairly productive in Modern English.
Pre-cluster shortening
In late
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, vowels were shortened before clusters of three consonants:
*OE ''gāst'' > NE ''ghost'' ; OE ''gāstliċ'' > NE ''ghastly''
*OE ''ċild'' > NE ''child'' ; OE ''ċildru'' + OE ''-an'' > NE ''children''
*OE ''gōd'' > NE ''good''; OE ''gōdspell'' > NE ''gospel''
As shown by ''ghastly'', this shortening occurred before the raising of OE to EME , which occurred in the transition to Middle English.
Later in Middle English, vowels were shortened before clusters of two consonants, except before and in some cases where
homorganic lengthening applied. Examples:
*OE ''cēpte'' > ''kept'' (cf. OE ''cēpan'' > ''keep'')
*OE ''mētte'' > ''met'' (cf. OE ''mētan'' > ''meet'')
Reduction of double consonants
Double (
geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
) consonants were reduced to single ones. This took place after open syllable lengthening; the syllable before a geminate was a closed syllable, hence vowels were not lengthened before (originally) doubled consonants. The loss of gemination may have been stimulated by its small functional load—by this time there were few
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
s of words distinguished solely by the single vs. double consonant contrast.
[Britton, D., ''Degemination in English, with special reference to the Middle English period'', (in:) ''Analysing Older English'', CUP 2011, pp. 231 ff.]
H-loss
The phoneme , when it occurred in the
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
, is believed to have had two
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s: the
voiceless palatal fricative
The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. It is the non-sibilant equi ...
, occurring after
front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...
s, and the
voiceless velar fricative
The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''loc ...
, occurring after back vowels. The usual spelling in both cases was , which is retained today in words like ''night'' and ''taught''.
These sounds were lost during the later Middle English and Early Modern English eras. The timing of this process was dependent on dialect; the fricatives were still pronounced in some educated speech in the 16th century, but they had disappeared by the late 17th.
[Wells, J.C., ''Accents of English'', CUP 1982, p. 190.] Loss of the fricatives was accompanied by some
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...
or
diphthongization
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.
Types
Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...
of preceding vowels. In some cases, the velar fricative developed into ; as such the preceding vowel was shortened, and the of a diphthong was absorbed. However, the palatal fricative in no instances became .
Some possible developments are illustrated below:
*OE ''niht'' ('night') > ME > > NE (by the
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
)
*OE ''hlæhhan'' ('to laugh') > ME > LLME > ENE > NE
*OE ''tōh'' ('tough') > ME > LLME > NE
This variable outcome, along with other variable changes and the ambiguity of the Middle English spelling (either or in
Early Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
) accounts for the numerous pronunciations of Modern English words in
''-ough-'' (e.g. ''though'', ''through'', ''bough'', ''rough'', ''trough'', ''thought'', with ''-ough-'' pronounced respectively).
spelled ''-gh-'' is realized as even today in some traditional dialects of
northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...
and more famously
Scots. Some accents of
northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...
lack the , instead exhibiting special vowel developments in some such words; for example, ''night'' as (sounds like ''neat'') and in the dialectal words ''owt'' and ''nowt'' (from ''aught'' and ''naught'', pronounced like ''out'' and ''nout'', meaning 'anything' and 'nothing').
The modern phoneme most commonly appears today in the typically Scottish word ''
loch
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots language, Scots and Irish language, Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is Cognate, cognate with the Manx language, Manx lough, Cornish language, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh language, Welsh w ...
'' and in names such as ''
Buchan
Buchan is an area of north-east Scotland, historically one of the original provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It is now one of the six committee areas and administrative areas of Aberdeenshire Council, Scotland. These areas were created by th ...
''. Here the is usual in Scotland, although the alternative is becoming more common among some younger speakers.
The same is true in Wales, in names such as ''
Loughor
Loughor () ( cy, Casllwchwr) is a Welsh town in the City and County of Swansea, within the Historic counties of Wales, historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales. It lies on the estuary of the River Loughor. The town has a community (Wales), ...
''. English speakers from elsewhere may replace the in such cases with , but some use in imitation of the local pronunciations (as they may in certain foreign words such as ''
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...
'', ''
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.[Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh: ...]
'', ''
chutzpah
Chutzpah () is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word ' (), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation but the form which entered English ...
'', etc.).
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a fundamental change in late Middle English (post-Chaucer) and
Early Modern English
Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
that affected the pronunciation of all of the long vowels. The high vowels and were
diphthongized, ultimately producing the modern diphthongs and , and all other vowels were raised.
Diphthong loss
Although not normally considered a part of the Great Vowel Shift, during the same time period most of the pre-existing Middle English diphthongs were
monophthongized:
* > ENE > > NE
* > ENE
* > ENE > NE
The remaining diphthongs developed as follows:
*, > ENE > NE . is still used in
Welsh English
Welsh English ( cy, Saesneg Gymreig) comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and gr ...
.
*, > NE
Vowel equivalents from Old English to Modern English
For a detailed description of the changes between Old English and Middle/Modern English, see the article on the
phonological history of English
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Among ...
. A summary of the main vowel changes is presented below. The spelling of Modern English largely reflects Middle English pronunciation.
Monophthongs
This table presents the general developments. Many exceptional outcomes occurred in particular environments: vowels were often lengthened in late Old English before , , ; vowels changed in
complex ways before , throughout the history of English etc. Vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before , and new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English ''w'', ''g'' > , and ''ġ'' ; for more information, see the section below. The only conditional development considered in detail below is Middle English open-syllable lengthening. In the column on modern spelling, ''CV'' means a sequence of a single consonant followed by a vowel.
The Modern English vowel usually spelled ''au'' (British , American ) does not appear in the above chart. Its main source is late Middle English < early and , which come from various sources: Old English ''aw'' and ''ag'' (''claw'' < ''clawu'', ''law'' < ''lagu''); diphthongization before (''sought'' < ''sōhte'', ''taught'' < ''tāhte'', ''daughter'' < ''dohtor''); borrowings from Latin and French (''fawn'' <
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
''faune'', ''Paul'' <
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''Paulus''). Other sources are Early Modern English lengthening of before (''salt'', ''all''); occasional shortening and later re-lengthening of Middle English (''broad'' < < ''brād''); and in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, lengthening of short ''o'' before
unvoiced fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s and
voiced velars (''dog'', ''long'', ''off'', ''cross'', ''moth'', all with in American English, at least in dialects that still maintain the difference between and ).
As mentioned above, Modern English is derived from the Middle English of London, which is derived largely from Anglian Old English, with some admixture of West Saxon and Kentish. One of the most noticeable differences among the dialects is the handling of original Old English . By the time of the written Old English documents, the Old English of Kent had already unrounded to , and the late Old English of Anglia unrounded to . In the West Saxon area, remained as such well into Middle English times and was written ''u'' in Middle English documents from the area. Some words with the sound were borrowed into London Middle English, where the unfamiliar was substituted with :
*''gild'' < ''gyldan'', ''did'' < ''dyde'', ''sin'' < ''synn'', ''mind'' < ''mynd'', ''dizzy'' < ''dysiġ'', ''lift'' < ''lyft'' etc. show the normal (Anglian) development;
*''much'' < ''myċel'' shows the West Saxon development;
*''merry'' < ''myriġ'' shows the Kentish development;
*''bury'' < ''byrġan'' has its spelling from West Saxon but its pronunciation from Kentish;
*''busy'' < ''bysiġ'', ''build'' < ''byldan'', ''buy'' < ''bycġan'' have their spelling from West Saxon but their pronunciation from Anglian.
Some apparent instances of modern ''e'' for Old English ''y'' are actually regular developments, particularly if the ''y'' is a development of earlier (West Saxon) ''ie'' from i-mutation of ''ea'', as the normal i-mutation of ''ea'' in Anglian is ''e''; for example, ''stern'' < < , ''steel'' < ''stȳle'' < (cf.
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...
''stehli''). Also, some apparent instances of modern ''u'' for Old English ''y'' may actually be from the influence of a related form with unmutated ''u'': ''sundry'' < ''syndriġ'', influenced by ''sundor'' "apart, differently" (compare ''to sunder'' and ''asunder'').
Diphthongs
References
Sources
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Middle English Phonology
English phonology
Phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...