Early Modern English Phonology: Consonants

Main source:

Lass, Roger. “Phonology and morphology.” Volume III 1476-1776

of the Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP, 1999.

The phoneme /h/: its postvocalic allophones ([ç] and [x])

§ either change to /f/

o mostly word-finally: tough, laugh

o but draft/draught (perhaps the <f> because there are so few /_ft/ words)

§ or disappear

o word-finally: through

o before word-final /t/: right

§ in both cases, lengthen preceding vowel

§ <night> /nIçt/ -> /nit/

· (now eligible for the GVS -> /nait/)

§ Old French delit now spelled delight

o “reverse spelling”: ass. that <_ight> /_it/ -> /_ait/

§ so if <night> can be /nit/ then /delit/ can be <delight>

Now /h/ is left only word-initially: not a very stable phoneme

o in OE, words could begin

o with /h/: hors, habban

o or with a cluster: hlúd

§ word-initial [h] lost in cluster: loud

§ in some ME mss, sometimes also word-initially, e.g. adde ‘had’

· native process rather than Norman scribes

o word-initial [h_] absent in words borrowed in ME from French

-not spelled in ostler (‘hosteler’, somebody at an inn who looks after horses)

-spelled in heir, honest

-spelled and reintroduced in history, human, humour

-prestige of Latin, written language/spelling pronunciation

-“h-dropping” a social issue from C18th onwards

-regional variation: herb, human...

Loss of postvocalic /r/ in context

-very early, lost first before /s/:

-OE baers -> bass (fish)

-change often reversed

-but there are some interesting doublets

-arse, horse, curse, burst ->

-we’ll look at the /æ/ vs /a/ pronunciation of ass vs arse later

-then, in some dialects (ancestors of RP, rural East Anglia), /r/ lost much more widely

-postvocalically (car or park)

-sporadically from C15th; widespread by C18th

-not initially approved of (r-dropping as bad as h-dropping)

-Walker: /r/ is “sometimes entirely sunk” in London

-do non-rhotic American accents (e.g. eastern seaboard, South)

-descend from these nonrhotic English dialects?

-e.g. East Anglian Puritans settling in the eastern seaboard

-or imitate it because of sustained contact?

-stay tuned

“Intrusive /r/” as an optional hiatus breaker

§ in nonrhotic accents from ‘underlying /r/’: <fair>:

o non-rhotic by itself

o but /r/ with fairer, fair isle

§ even if no ‘historical /r/’: Anna is, law and order:

Loss of /l/ in some contexts (/l/ and /r/ similar)

-lost after low back vowels before certain consonants

-velar: talk, walk; folk, yolk, Holmes

-but not before most dentals: salt, bolt

-labial: half, palm

-in some dialects, restored (spelling pronunciation)

-calm, palm, balm, alms

-more recent: vocalization of /l/ in Cockney English (M375)

-pill [p`io], bottle [o] or [u]

Loss of final stops in some word-final consonant clusters, e.g.

-loss of final alveolars in certain clusters

-when /s/ is involved

-handsome, landscape

-castle, hasten, wrestle, ostler, Christmas

-my electricians talk about joyces in the walls:

joist by my electricians

-[t] after voiceless consonants

-exploited in “Duc(t/k) tape”

-stric, reflec, kep, promp

-not reflected in standard spelling

-loss of final stop in other clusters

-/g/ after /ŋ/: sing /sIŋg/ -> /sIŋ/

Two new phonemes

Two new phonemes arise that filled gaps in the existing system

/ŋ/

-in OE, [ŋ] only occurred before /k, g/: sing /sIŋg/

-[ŋ] used to be the allophone of /n/ before /g/

-but word-final stops often lost in clusters

-sing /sIŋg/ -> /sIŋ/ with loss of word-final stop

-now sing is a minimal pair with sin, so the /ŋ/ is officially a phoneme

-/ŋ/: now there’s a velar nasal to go with the velar stops

-often variation between velar and alveolar nasal, /ŋ/ and /n/: runnin’

/ž/: -result of

(a) borrowing from French (beige) and

(b) a set of sound changes called palatalization

-measure: from /zy/ to /ž/; now minimal pair with mesher

-now there’s a voiced alveopalatal fricative to go with the voiceless one /š/

-remember that English consonants tend to come in voice/less pairs

Assibilation in context

/zy/ -> /ž/: seizure

/sy/ -> /š/: nation, ocean

-explains onset of sugar, sure

-Love’s Labours Lost: puns on shooters and suitors

-both kinds of hunters

-sometimes reversed: suitors not /š/

-if /sj/ before /u/ didn’t become /š/, /ĵ/ could be dropped: Susan, supreme

-still regional variation in words like tissue, sexual

/dy/ -> /ĵ/: soldier

-where does Cajun come from? (Acadian)

/ty/ -> /č/: creature

-what’s another form of this word

Many sound changes not reflected in spelling

-Cajun an exception

-some only in informal/regional varieties? ass, hoss, varmint

Spelling pronunciation has reversed some of them

-native processes: calm

-etymological respellings:

-vulgar Latin fallita -> OF, ME faute -> EmodE fault

-sometimes changes pronunciation: fault, throne, habit

-sometimes doesn’t: dette -> debt

Early Modern Phonology: Some not-so-great vowel shifts

Short vowels

Following /r/ tends to do odd things to vowels

§ e.g. the “NURSE” shift, centres

o girl /I/ ->

o fern /ε/ ->

o hurt /U/ ->

§ we know that this sound change preceded the loss of postvocalic /r/!

§ e.g. can lower vowels, esp. /εr/ to /ar/

o permanently with native words like OE steorre -> star

o temporarily with loanwords like servant, mercy

§ person

§ clerk

§ vermin

Variation between /æ/ and /α/

-/æ/ became /α/

-before /r/: harm, hard

-a preceding /w/ rounds it: earlier rhymes like

-arm and warm, regard and reward

-in some dialects,

-sporadically before /ns/ and /nt/

-dance, plant

-before voiceless fricatives (except /š/)

-class, pass, path

-but not if another vowel follows:

-classical, passage

Variation between /I/ and /ε/

-pretty

-git ‘get’

ME /U/ “centered and unrounded in most environments” to /^/ (but)

-in Shakespeare’s English, run, mud, cut, love, come would have rhymed with put, bush

-why are love and come spelled with <o>?

-change sometimes blocked by

-preceding labial consonants (esp. followed by /l/, /š/, /č/)

-full, pull, wool, wolf

-bush, push

-butcher

Long vowels

Exceptions to the Great Vowel Shift

Effect of following /r/ (can lower preceding vowel)

-/o/ didn’t rise to /u/: floor

-/ε:/ didn’t rise to /i/: wear, bear, tear, pear

-train wreck: pair, pare, pear

-but: ear, hear, etc.

-/ε:/ sometimes shortened before the GVS happened

-death, deaf

-bread, head

-/u/ sometimes shortened to /U/ after the GVS happened

-words where it shortened early joined /U/->/^/ (cut)

-flood, blood: /o/ -> /u/ -> /U/ -> /^/

-words where it shortened later missed the boat (or the but) and stayed at /U/

-good and book: /o/ -> /u/ -> /U/

A diphthong or two

Relevance: do you say news /njuwz/ or /nuwz/?

[-EmodE /iu/ came from a variety of OE/ME sources

-/εu/: dew, beauty

-/eu/: due, new, fruit

-/iu/: spew, rule]

-EmodE /iu/ -> /ju/

-usually disappeared after /r/, e.g. rude

-/j/ retained in some contexts, e.g.

-after labials: pure, beauty, music

-after velars: cute

-/j/ variably deleted in other contexts

-after /s/: assume

-particularly stigmatized after /t/, /d/, /n/, e.g. tune, duke, news

For further reading: Jack Chambers’ research on ‘yod-dropping’ in Canadian English