Early Modern Phonology: Some
not-so-great vowel shifts
Variation
between /ć/ and /α/
-/ć/
became /α/
-in early English, before /r/: harm, hard
-a preceding /w/ rounds it: warm,
reward
-not yet evident in earlier
rhymes like arm and warm, regard and reward
-in standard British English
-sporadically before /ns/
and /nt/
-dance, plant
-before voiceless fricatives
(except /š/)
-class, pass,
path
-but not
if another vowel follows:
-classical,
passage
-read
more about this: Crystal 93, 207; Algeo and Pyles, 165, 213
ME
/U/ “centered and unrounded in most environments” to /^/ (but)
-in
Shakespeare’s English, run, mud, cut would have rhymed with put, bush
-love and come also in this category:
they’re really “U” words that happen to be spelled with an <o>
-change
sometimes blocked by
-preceding labial consonants (esp.
followed by /l/, /š/, /č/)
-full, pull, wool,
wolf
-bush, push
-butcher
-read
more: Crystal 69; Origins 163; Problems 7.4.3 (p. 152)
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 happened before /r/ was lost in some dialects!
§ e.g. can lower vowels, esp.
/εr/ to /ar/
o
permanently
with native words like OE steorre -> star
·
temporarily
with loanwords like servant, mercy
o sometimes variant forms
coexist
§ person
§ clerk
§ vermin
-read
more: Problems 7.4.7 (153)
Long
vowels
Exceptions
to the Great Vowel Shift
Effect
of following /r/ (can lower preceding vowel): Problems 7.4.8
-/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: Problems 7.4.4
-death, deaf
-bread, head
-/u/
sometimes laxed/shortened to /U/ after the GVS happened
-words where it shortened early joined
the unrounding of /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 (Origins 164)
Modern
relevance: do you say news /njuwz/ or /nuwz/?
[-EmodE
/yu/ came from a variety of OE/ME sources
-/εu/: dew, beauty
-/eu/: due, new, fruit
-/iu/: spew, rule]
-EmodE
/yu/
-usually disappeared after /r/, e.g. rude
-/y/ retained in some contexts, e.g.
-initially: use, Europe
-after labials: pure,
beauty, music
-after velars: cute, argue,
hew
-/y/ variably deleted in other
contexts
-for some older Canadians, particularly stigmatized
after /t/, /d/, /n/,
e.g. tune, duke,
news
-after /s/ and /z/, /y/ involved in
another sound change called assibilation
-sugar, sure
/sy/ -> /š/
-read
more: Crystal 341; Problems 7.4.6
For
further reading: Jack
Chambers’ research on ‘yod-dropping’ in Canadian English
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: sigh,
through
o
before
word-final /t/: right, thought
§ if the vowel was short, the
process lengthened it
§ <night> /nIçt/ ->
/nit/
· (now eligible for the GVS
-> /nait/)
§ Old French delit
-> ME 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 ‘loud’, hwíl ‘while’
§ word-initial [h] lost in
cluster: loud
§ in some ME mss, sometimes
also word-initially, e.g. adde ‘had’
· used to be blamed on Norman
scribes, but it’s a native process
o
late Latin and
Old French had lost word-initial /h-/, so loans into ME reflect that
-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...
Read
more: Origins 166, Problems 7.5.1
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 ->
-think about the /ć/ vs /a/ pronunciation of ass
vs arse!
-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
read
more: Crystal 69, 93, 307, 312; Origins 167, 213; Problems
7.5.5
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]
Read
more: Origins 166, Problems 7.5.4
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 -> jois, plural joises
-loss/glottalization of [t]
after voiceless consonants
-exploited by
makers of “Duc(t/k) tape”
-not
reflected in standard spelling
-loss of final stop in other clusters
-/g/ after /ŋ/: sing
/sIŋg/ -> /sIŋ/
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 in lexical words, 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/: a velar nasal to
go with the velar stops
Not
the same as ‘g-dropping’ in present participles, e.g. running /-in/
Read:
Crystal 69, Problems 7.5.3 (155)
/ž/: -result of
(a)
borrowing from
French (beige) and
(b)
a
set of sound changes called palatalization or assibilation
-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?
-sometimes
reversed: Indian
/ty/ -> /č/: creature
-what’s
another form of this word?
Read
more: Crystal 69, Origins 164, Problems 7.5.2 (155)
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