18. Me Changes in spelling

French graphic habits were introduced, and marking the sounds became European in form, no alien letters hampered reading because all they were exclusively Latin. Specifically English sounds, earlier marked by specific only for the English language were replaced by digraphs. G,Y, and wynn were replaced by Latin letters.

od – god jdn - goonз-у jrej – grey jear - ear

The sound dj marked by сз was also rendered by g or dg - singe, n French borrowings the same sound was marked according to the radition by j - judge, June. Letter q, v were introduced.

Long u was replaced by digraph ou, in the French tradition: hus - hous, in final and occasionally in medial it was ow: hu- how; cu- cow, dun - down. some cases the sound и came to be represented by o, especially neighbouring the letters with many vertical lines lufu - loue; cumen - comen etc.

Long sound о is now rendered by oo\fot, tod —> foot, tooth ) e was marked either by a digraph ее metan - mete, о meet) or turned into ie; feld - field; deof - thef - thief (like :hief, relief)

б gave way to digraph th —> dcet, cild – child, sh fron sc – sh, sch – ship. k+ consonant – cnawan – knowen.

19. Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift affected all long vowels in native as well as borrowed before it words; table and chamber, doubt and fine, appeal and tone developed in full accordance with the development of the English sound system. Some borrowed words preserve [i:] or [u:] in the open syllable (routine 1670-80) if they were borrowed from French in the later period; some other, though taken during this process still resisted the change and remain phonetically only partially assimilated: police 1520-30, machine 1540-50 etc. Latin borrowings that were taken from written sources, however, usually have a vowel that was changed in the course of the shift.

Wilhelm Horn and Martin Lenhert suggest that it resulted from intonation conditions - a high tone which is characteristic of English emotional speech naturally makes sound narrower. Andre Martinet connects the shift with the fact that traditional phonemic quality of English sounds was no longer preserved, and so short and long vowels became mere allophones of the same phoneme. A need arose to reinforce them, so the articulation was emphasized and resulted in diphthongization (starting with i: and u:). A Russian linguist V. Plotkin states that with the loss of unstressed words a great number of monosyllabic words arose, where only the length of the vowels was the distinctive feature (god and good etc.) Under such conditions the phonology of length-shortness acquired simply other manifestation.

The diphthongs that arose as a result of the Great Vowel Shift did not enrich the phonological system of the language; such diphthongs had already existed in Middle English.

20. Ne Phonetics

In Modern English, there is no one-to-one relation between the system of writing and the system of pronunciation. The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but in (Standard British) English there are approximately 44 speach sounds. The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. To represent the basic sound of spoken languages linguists use a set of phonetic symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The last systematic and cardinal changes in the sound system occurred in Early New English

1. The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1660. All long vowels were narrowed, the narrowest ones became diphthongs

a-ei (take)

e – i: (he, me)

y, I –ai ( five )

u: - au (down)

o: – ou (home)

o: in closed syllables – u: (moon)

Theories that explain shift:

1. Horn and Lernert - explain it by intonation, high pitched tone

2. Andre Martinet – think that long and short vowels became allophones and language wanted to differentiate long and short ones

3. V. Plotkin – explain it by monosyllabic word structure (god, good) because of losing of ending

2. Consonant changes

• Voicing ( when consonant is between 2 vowels

s->z disappear, disappoint

t->d letter, better

• Loss of consonants

-mb - comb, tomb

-mn – autumn

- bt – debt, doubt

L+cons – talk, calf

Gh – night

Kn – knight

Gn – gnaw, foreign

Ps – psychology

• Sibilation – appearance of sibilants (hissing sounds)

Division [Ʒn] Asia,

Education – [dju:] schedule

19. NE changes in consonants

Consonant changes

1. Voicing ( when consonant is between 2 vowels

s->z disappear, disappoint

t->d letter, better

2. Loss of consonants

-mb - comb, tomb

-mn – autumn

- bt – debt, doubt

L+cons – talk, calf

Gh – night

Kn – knight

Gn – gnaw, foreign

Ps – psychology

3. Sibilation – appearance of sibilants (hissing sounds)

Division [Ʒn] Asia,

Education – [dju:] schedule