The
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift was a major series of changes in the
pronunciation of the
English language
English language that took place, beginning in
southern England, primarily between 1350 and the 1600s and
1700s,[1][2] today influencing effectively all dialects of English.
Through this vowel shift, all
Middle English
Middle English long vowels changed their
pronunciation. In addition, some consonant sounds changed as well,
particular those that became silent; the term
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift is
sometimes used to include these consonant changes as well.
English spelling was first becoming standardized in the 15th and 16th
centuries, and the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift is responsible for the fact that
English spellings now often strongly deviate in their representation
of English pronunciations.[3] The
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift was first studied
by
Otto Jespersen
Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who
coined the term.[4]
Contents
1 Causes
2 Overall changes
3 Details
3.1
Middle English
Middle English vowel system
3.2 Changes
3.3 First phase
3.4 Second phase
3.5 Later mergers
4 Northern English and Scots
5 Exceptions
6 Related consonant changes
7 Spelling
8 See also
9 Notes
10 Sources
10.1 References
10.2 Bibliography
11 External links
Causes[edit]
The causes of the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift have been a source of intense
scholarly debate and as yet there is no firm consensus. The greatest
changes occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries. Some
scholars[who?] have argued that the rapid migration of peoples from
northern England to the southeast following the
Black Death
Black Death caused a
mixing of accents that forced a change in the standard London
vernacular. Others argue that the influx of French loanwords was a
major factor in the shift.[5] Yet others assert that because of the
increasing prestige of French pronunciations among the middle classes
(perhaps related to the English aristocracy's switching from French to
English around this time), a process of hypercorrection may have
started a shift that unintentionally resulted in vowel pronunciations
that were less like French instead of more.[6] An opposing theory
states that the wars with France and general anti-French sentiments
caused hypercorrection in order to deliberately make English sound
less like French.[7]
Overall changes[edit]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering
support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead
of
Unicode
Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA.
The main difference between the pronunciation of
Middle English
Middle English in the
year 1400 and
Modern English (Received Pronunciation) is in the value
of the long vowels. Long vowels in
Middle English
Middle English had "continental"
values, much like those in Italian and Standard German, but in
standard Modern English, they have entirely different pronunciations.
The change in pronunciation is known as the Great Vowel Shift.[8]
Word
Vowel pronunciation
Late Middle English
before the GVS
Modern English
after the GVS
bite
/iː/
/aɪ/
meet
/eɪ/
/iː/
meat
/ɛː/
mate
/ɑː/
/eɪ/
out
/uː/
/aʊ/
boot
/oʊ/
/uː/
boat
/ɔː/
/oʊ/
This timeline shows the main vowel changes that occurred between late
Middle English
Middle English in the year 1400 and
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation in the
mid-20th century by using representative words. The Great Vowel Shift
occurred in the lower half of the table, between 1400 and 1600. The
changes that happened after 1600 are not usually considered part of
the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift proper. Pronunciation is given in the
International Phonetic Alphabet:[9]
Details[edit]
Middle English
Middle English vowel system[edit]
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Before the Great Vowel Shift,
Middle English
Middle English in Southern England had
seven long vowels, /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/. The vowels
occurred in the words bite, meet, meat, mate, boat, boot and out.
Southern Middle English
vowel system
front
back
close
/iː/: bite
/uː/: out
close-mid
/eː/: meet
/oː/: boot
open-mid
/ɛː/: meat
/ɔː/: boat
open
/aː/: mate
—
The words had very different pronunciations in
Middle English
Middle English from
their pronunciations in Modern English. Long i in bite was pronounced
as /iː/ so
Middle English
Middle English bite sounded like
Modern English beet
/biːt/; long e in meet was pronounced as /eː/ so
Middle English
Middle English meet
sounded similar to
Modern English mate /meɪt/; long a in mate was
pronounced as /aː/, with a vowel like Scottish English ah in father
[faːðər] or General American short o in cot /kät/; and long o in
boot was pronounced as /oː/, similar to modern oa in General American
boat /oʊ/. In addition,
Middle English
Middle English had a long /ɛː/ in beat,
like modern short e in bed but pronounced longer, and a long /ɔː/ in
boat.
Changes[edit]
After around 1300, the long vowels of
Middle English
Middle English began changing in
pronunciation. The two close vowels, /iː uː/, became diphthongs
(vowel breaking), and the other five, /eː ɛː aː ɔː oː/,
underwent an increase in tongue height (raising).
They occurred over several centuries and can be divided into two
phases. The first phase affected the close vowels /iː uː/ and the
close-mid vowels /eː oː/: /eː oː/ were raised to /iː uː/, and
/iː uː/ became the diphthongs /ei ou/ or /əi əu/.[10] The second
phase affected the open vowel /aː/ and the open-mid vowels /ɛː
ɔː/: /aː ɛː ɔː/ were raised, in most cases changing to /eː iː
oː/.[11]
The
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift changed vowels without merger so Middle English
before the vowel shift had the same number of vowel phonemes as Early
Modern English after the vowel shift. After the Great Vowel Shift,
some vowel phonemes began merging. Immediately after the Great Vowel
Shift, the vowels of meet and meat were different, but they are merged
in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as /miːt/. However,
during the 16th and the 17th centuries, there were many different
mergers, and some mergers can be seen in individual Modern English
words like great, which is pronounced with the vowel /eɪ/ as in mate
rather than the vowel /iː/ as in meat.[12]
This is a simplified picture of the changes that happened between late
Middle English
Middle English and today's English. Pronunciations in 1400, 1500,
1600, and 1900 are shown.[8] To hear recordings of the sounds, click
the phonetic symbols.
Word
Vowel pronunciation
Soundfile
late ME
EModE
ModE
1400
1500
1600
1900
bite
/iː/
/ei/
/ɛi/
/aɪ/
meet
/eː/
/iː/
/iː/
meat
/ɛː/
/eː/
/iː/
mate
/aː/
/æː/
/ɛː/
/eɪ/
out
/uː/
/ou/
/ɔu/
/aʊ/
boot
/oː/
/uː/
/uː/
boat
/ɔː/
/oː/
/oʊ/
Before labial consonants and also after /j/,[13] /uː/ did not shift,
and /uː/ remains as in soup and room (its
Middle English
Middle English spelling was
roum).
First phase[edit]
The first phase of the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English
close-mid vowels /eː oː/, as in beet and boot, and the close vowels
/iː uː/, as in bite and out. The close-mid vowels /eː oː/ became
close /iː uː/, and the close vowels /iː uː/ became diphthongs. The
first phase was complete in 1500, meaning that by that time, words
like beet and boot had lost their
Middle English
Middle English pronunciation, and
were pronounced with the same vowels as in Modern English. The words
bite and out were pronounced with diphthongs, but not the same
diphthongs as in Modern English.[10]
First phase of the Great Vowel Shift
Word
Vowel pronunciation
1400
1550
bite
/iː/
/ɛi/
meet
/eː/
/iː/
out
/uː/
/ɔu/
boot
/oː/
/uː/
Scholars agree that the
Middle English
Middle English close vowels /iː uː/ became
diphthongs around the year 1500, but disagree about what diphthongs
they changed to. According to Lass, the words bite and out after
diphthongization were pronounced as /beit/ and /out/, similar to
American English bait /beɪt/ and oat /oʊt/. Later, the diphthongs
/ei ou/ shifted to /ɛi ɔu/, then /əi əu/, and finally to Modern
English /aɪ aʊ/.[10] This sequence of events is supported by the
testimony of orthoepists before Hodges in 1644.
However, many scholars such as Dobson (1968), Kökeritz (1953), and
Cercignani (1981) argue for theoretical reasons that, contrary to what
16th-century witnesses report, the vowels /iː uː/ were actually
immediately centralized and lowered to /əi əu/.[nb 1]
Evidence from northern English and Scots (see below) suggests that the
close-mid vowels /eː oː/ were the first to shift. As the Middle
English vowels /eː oː/ were raised towards /iː uː/, they forced
the original
Middle English
Middle English /iː uː/ out of place and caused them to
become diphthongs /ei ou/. This type of sound change, in which one
vowel's pronunciation shifts so that it is pronounced like a second
vowel, and the second vowel is forced to change its pronunciation, is
called a push chain.[14]
However, according to professor Jürgen Handke, for some time, there
was a phonetic split between words with the vowel /iː/ and the
diphthong /əi/, in words where the
Middle English
Middle English /iː/ shifted to
the
Modern English /aɪ/. For an example, high was pronounced with the
vowel /iː/, and like and my were pronounced with the diphthong
/əi/.[15] Therefore, for logical reasons, the close vowels /iː uː/
could have diphthongized before the close-mid vowels /eː oː/ raised.
Otherwise, high would probably rhyme with thee rather than my. This
type of chain is called a drag chain.
Second phase[edit]
The second phase of the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English
open vowel /aː/, as in mate, and the
Middle English
Middle English open-mid vowels
/ɛː ɔː/, as in meat and boat. Around 1550,
Middle English
Middle English /aː/
was raised to /æː/. Then, after 1600, the new /æː/ was raised to
/ɛː/, with the
Middle English
Middle English open-mid vowels /ɛː ɔː/ raised to
close-mid /eː oː/. [11]
Second phase of the Great Vowel Shift
Word
Vowel pronunciation
1400
1550
1640
meat
/ɛː/
/ɛː/
/eː/
mate
/aː/
/aː/, /æː/
/ɛː/
boat
/ɔː/
/ɔː/
/oː/
Later mergers[edit]
During the first and the second phases of the Great Vowel Shift, long
vowels were shifted without merging with other vowels, but after the
second phase, several vowels merged. The later changes also involved
the
Middle English
Middle English diphthong /ai/, as in day, which had
monophthongised to /ɛː/, and merged with
Middle English
Middle English /aː/ as in
mate or /ɛː/ as in meat.[12]
During the 16th and 17th centuries, several different pronunciation
variants existed among different parts of the population for words
like meet, meat, mate, and day. In each pronunciation variant,
different pairs or trios of words were merged in pronunciation. Four
different pronunciation variants are shown in the table below. The
fourth pronunciation variant gave rise to Modern English
pronunciation. In Modern English, meet and meat are merged in
pronunciation and both have the vowel /iː/, and mate and day are
merged with the diphthong /eɪ/, which developed from the 16th-century
long vowel /eː/.[12]
Second phase of the Great Vowel Shift
Word
Middle
English
16th century pronunciation variants
1
2
3
4
meet
/eː/
/iː/
/iː/
/iː/
/iː/
meat
/ɛː/
/ɛː/
/eː/
/eː/
day
/ai/
/ɛː/
/eː/
mate
/aː/
/æː/
Modern English typically has the meet–meat merger: both meet and
meat are pronounced with the vowel /iː/. Words like great and steak,
however, have merged with mate and are pronounced with the vowel
/eɪ/, which developed from the /eː/ shown in the table above.
Northern English and Scots[edit]
The
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift affected other dialects as well as the standard
English of southern England but in different ways. In Northern
England, the long back vowels remained unaffected because the long mid
back vowel had undergone an earlier shift.[16] Similarly, the Scots
language in
Scotland
.svg/440px-Highlands_and_Islands_(Scottish_Parliament_electoral_region).svg.png)
Scotland had a different vowel system before the Great
Vowel Shift, as /oː/ had shifted to /øː/ in Early Scots. In the
Scots equivalent of the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowels /iː/,
/eː/ and /aː/ shifted to /ei/, /iː/ and /eː/ by the Middle Scots
period and /uː/ remained unaffected.[17]
The first step in the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift in Northern and Southern
English is shown in the table below. The Northern English developments
of
Middle English
Middle English /iː, eː/ and /oː, uː/ were different from
Southern English. In particular, the Northern English vowels /iː/ in
bite, /eː/ in feet, and /oː/ in boot shifted, while the vowel /uː/
in house did not:
Word
Vowel
Middle English
Northern
Southern
bite
/iː/
/ɛi/
/ai/
feet
/eː/
/iː/
/iː/
house
/uː/
/uː/
/au/
boot
/oː/
/iː/
/uː/
The vowel systems of Northern and Southern
Middle English
Middle English immediately
before the
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift were different in one way. In Northern
Middle English, the back close-mid vowel /oː/ in boot had already
shifted to front /øː/ (a sound change known as fronting), like the
long ö in German hören [ˈhøːʁən] ( listen) "hear".
Thus, Southern English had a back close-mid vowel /oː/, but Northern
English did not:[14]
Southern Middle English
vowel system
front
back
close
iː
uː
close-mid
eː
oː
open-mid
ɛː
ɔː
open
aː
—
Northern Middle English
vowel system
front
back
close
iː
uː
close-mid
eː, øː
—
open-mid
ɛː
ɔː
open
aː
—
In both Northern and Southern English, the first step of the Great
Vowel Shift raised the close-mid vowels to become close. Northern
Middle English
Middle English had two close-mid vowels – /eː/ in feet and /øː/
in boot – which were raised to /iː/ and /yː/. Later on, Northern
English /yː/ changed to /iː/, so that boot has the same vowel as
feet. Southern
Middle English
Middle English had two close-mid vowels – /eː/ in
feet and /oː/ in boot – which were raised to /iː/ and /uː/.
In Southern English, the close vowels /iː/ in bite and /uː/ in house
shifted to become diphthongs, but in Northern English, /iː/ in bite
shifted but /uː/ in house did not.
If the difference between the Northern and Southern vowel shifts is
caused by the vowel systems at the time of the Great Vowel Shift,
/uː/ did not shift because there was no back mid vowel /oː/ in
Northern English. In Southern English, shifting of /oː/ to /uː/
could have caused[why?] diphthongisation of original /uː/, but
because Northern English had no back close-mid vowel /oː/ to shift,
the back close vowel /uː/ did not diphthongise.
Exceptions[edit]
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section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material
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Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift.
Examples are father, which failed to become /ɛː/, and broad, which
failed to become /oʊ/. The word room, which was spelled as roum in
Middle English, retains its
Middle English
Middle English pronunciation. It is an
exception to the shifting of /uː/ to /aʊ/ because it is followed by
m, a labial consonant.
The class ea did not take the step to /iː/ in several words. The
presence of /r/ in swear and bear caused the vowel quality to be
retained[citation needed] but not in the cases of hear and near.
Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further
complications: ea is again a good example by shortening commonly
before coronal consonants such as d and th, thus: dead, head, threat,
wealth etc. (That is known as the bred–bread merger.)[citation
needed] The oo was shortened from /uː/ to /ʊ/, in many cases before
k, d and less commonly t: book, foot, good, etc. Some words
subsequently changed from /ʊ/ to /ʌ/: blood, flood. Similar but
older shortening occurred for some instances of ou: could.
Some loanwords, such as soufflé and umlaut, have retained a spelling
from their origin language that may seem similar to the previous
examples; but, since they were not a part of English at the time of
the Great Vowel Shift, they are not actually exceptions to the shift.
Related consonant changes[edit]
During this same period, there were a number of consonant changes,
particularly changes that were in combination with the vowel changes,
or cases of silencing of consonants. An often-cited example is the
word knight, which in
Middle English
Middle English was pronounced /kni:xt/. The k
and the gh were silenced, but additionally the i changed its value to
/aɪ/. This vowel shift, of course, was not independent of the
consonant shift as it was the combined sound /ix/ that actually made
the transition to /aɪ/.
The following are examples of some of the most common
consonant-related shifts that occurred:
Word
Vowel pronunciation
Middle English
before the GVS
Modern English
after the GVS
knight
/kni:xt/
/naɪt/
enough
(originally ynough)
/ɪˈnoːx/
/ɪˈnʌf/
gnaw
/gnɑu̯/
/nɔ:/
Spelling[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help
improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2017)
(Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Main article: English orthography
The printing press was introduced to England in the 1470s by William
Caxton and later Richard Pynson.[18] The adoption and use of the
printing press accelerated the process of standardization of English
spelling, which continued into the 16th century. The standard
spellings were those of
Middle English
Middle English pronunciation, and spelling
conventions continued from Old English. However, the Middle English
spellings were retained into
Modern English while the Great Vowel
Shift was taking place, which caused some of the peculiarities of
Modern English spelling in relation to vowels.
See also[edit]
Canaanite Shift
Chain shift
Vowel shift
Consonant mutation
History of the English language
International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonological history of English vowels
"The Chaos"
Notes[edit]
^ Centralizing to /ɨi ɨu/ and then lowering to /əi əu/ argued by
Stockwell (1961).
Sources[edit]
References[edit]
^ Stockwell, Robert (2002). "How much shifting actually occurred in
the historical English vowel shift?" (PDF). In Minkova, Donka;
Stockwell, Robert. Studies in the History of the English Language: A
Millennial Perspective. Mouton de Gruyter.
ISBN 3-11-017368-9.
^ Wyld, H. C. (1957) [1914], A Short History of English
^ Denham, Kristin; Lobeck, Anne (2009),
Linguistics
Linguistics for Everyone: An
Introduction, Cengage Learning, p. 89
^ Labov, William (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change. Blackwell
Publishing. p. 145. ISBN 0-631-17914-3.
^ Millward, C.M.; Hayes, Mary (2011). A Biography of the English
Language (3rd ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. p. 250.
ISBN 978-0495906414.
^ Nevalainen, Terttu; Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, eds. (2012). The
Oxford Handbook of the History of English. Oxford University Press.
p. 794. ASIN B009UU4P66.
^ Asya Pereltsvaig (Aug 3, 2010). "
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift — part 3".
Languages of the World.
^ a b Lass 2000, p. 72.
^ Wheeler, L Kip. "
Middle English
Middle English consonant sounds" (PDF).
^ a b c Lass 2000, pp. 80–83.
^ a b Lass 2000, pp. 83–85.
^ a b c Görlach 1991, pp. 68–69.
^ Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of
North American English. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter. p. 14.
ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
^ a b Lass 2000, pp. 74–77.
^ Jürgen Handke (Dec 7, 2012). "PHY117 – The Great Vowel Shift".
YouTube. The Virtual
Linguistics
Linguistics Campus.
^ Wales, K (2006). Northern English: a cultural and social history.
Cambridge: Cambridge University. p. 48.
^ Macafee, Caroline; Aitken, A. J., A History of Scots to 1700, DOST,
12, pp. lvi–lix
^ Olague, Susana Llamas. "Printers, Orthoepists, and Standardized
English". CHASS. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
Bibliography[edit]
Baugh, Alfred C.; Cable, Thomas (1993). A History of the English
Language (4 ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Cable, Thomas (1983). A Companion to Baugh & Cable's History of
the English Language. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall.
Cercignani, Fausto (1981). Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan
Pronunciation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dillon, George L., "American English vowels", Studying Phonetics on
the Net
Dobson, E. J. (1968). English Pronunciation 1500–1700 (2 vols) (2
ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (See vol. 2, 594–713 for
discussion of long stressed vowels)
Freeborn, Dennis (1992). From
Old English
Old English to Standard English: A
Course Book in Language Variation Across Time. Ottawa, Canada:
University of Ottawa Press.
Görlach, Manfred (1991). Introduction to Early Modern English.
Cambridge University Press.
Kökeritz, Helge (1953). Shakespeare's Pronunciation. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Lass, Roger (2000). "Chapter 3: Phonology and Morphology". In Lass,
Roger. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume III:
1476–1776. Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–186.
Millward, Celia (1996). A Biography of the English Language (2 ed.).
Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.
Pyles, Thomas; Algeo, John (1993). The Origins and Development of the
English Language (4 ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Rogers, William 'Bill', A Simplified History of the Phonemes of
English, Furman, archived from the original on 2002-08-03
External links[edit]
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift Video lecture
Menzer, M., "What is the Great Vowel Shift?", Great Vowel Shift,
Furman University
"The Great Vowel Shift", Geoffrey Chaucer, Harvard University
v
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