11. Phonetic Changes in the Early New English Period

The changes in the sound system of the period were significant. The process of the levelling of endings continued, there were positional and assimilative changes of short vowels, and a significant change in the whole system of long vowels, called the Great Vowel Shift. During the period the process of simplification of consonant clusters and loss of consonants in certain positions continued. The changes were numerous

The unstressed e was lost. The process of levelling of endings led to total disappearance of the neutral sound ə marked by letter e in the endings (it was preserved and even pronounced more distinctly like [i] only when two identical consonants were found in the root and in the endings), though in spelling the letter might be preserved: no vowel is found in kept, slept, crossed, played; walls, pens, bones, stones - butut is preserved in stresses, dresses; wanted, parted; watches, judges; wicked and crooked.

The whole syllables might be lost in the Early New English pronunciation of long words. In some words this loss was fixed in spelling, like in chapter (ME chapiter), palsy (ME parlesie), fancy (ME fantasie); some other words preserved the lost syllables in spelling, e.g: colonel, business, medicine.

The sound e before r changed into a:. This change in many cases (but not always) was reflected in spelling:

ME- NE

sterre – star

herte - heart

bern — barn

sterven — starve, kerven — carve, merveil — marvel, clerc — clerk sergant – sergeant.

Some place-names changed the pronunciation (Derby, Berkley Berkshire, Hertford) though this change is not reflected in their spelling.It is due to this change that the alphabetic reading of the letter r [er] began to be pronounced as [ar].

From the 15 th century all long vowels that existed in Middle English changed their quality. This change was a fundamental one, changing the entire vocalic system, and the essence of it is as follows. All long vowels narrowed and the narrowest of them turned into diphthongs. The shift resulted in the following changes: i: into ai: time, like, rise, side

i: into i: meet, see, keen, deep; in borrowed words chief, receive, seize;

ε (e: open) — into e: closed, then into i: east, clean, speak, sea;

a: into ei (through the stage ǽ, ǽi): take, make, name, grave, pave, sane;

o: open, from Old English a into ou: stone, bone, home, oak, go, moan;

o closed (from Old and Middle English о in native words as well in the borrowings) into u: tool, moon, stool, do, root, room;

u: into au: house, mouse, out, noun, down, how.

The changes were gradual, of course, and in Shakespearean times the vowels were somewhere halfway to its present-day stage. The change from ε : to i: had the intermediate stage [e:]. This explains why the rhyme in sonnets is not exact in present-day system of reading:

The intermediate stages of the development of u: were [əu] -[aeu] and finally [au]. Consequently, a became ə: - əi: -ei; and i: - ei -əi - ai.

The Great Vowel Shift affected all long vowels in native as well as rowed before it words; table and chamber, doubt and fine, appeal 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 only partially assimilated: police 1520-30, machine 1540-50. Latin borrowings that were taken from written sources, however, usually have a vowel that was changed in the course of the shift.

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. They arose in the process of vocalization of Ʒ:wey (from we Ʒ) had the same diphthong that appeared in wake sayde (from səƷ de) in Middle English' had the sound' that appeared in side, but later the diphthong developed into a short monopthong.

Depending on the following consonant, r in particular, there were somewhat different variants of vowels that appeared in the Great Vowel Shift. If the long vowel was followed by r- the following variants appeared:

are —> [eir] fare; compare with fate

ear —> [ier] fear [eir] bear

eer —> [ier] steer (but steep)

ir —> [aier] tire (but time)

or —> [o:r] boar (but boat)

o open —> [uer] moor (but moon)

u:—> [auer] power (but house, now)

Short vowels were changed, too, but the changes here are not that systematic. The vowels changed depending on their environment. Short a found in closed syllables generally changed into æ: that; man; hat; cat; rat; pan; can; stand; back etc.

If it was preceded by the sound w, it remained unchanged and eventually developed into o: war; want; was; warm, watch; wasp; water etc. When the same sound was followed by 1 + consonant (other that m and n) turned into long o: all; call; talk; walk; stalk. The exceptions from the general rule are: cant; scant; pant; grand where it turned into æ, gaunt, haunt where the sound o: appeared; in the like change, strange it turned into ei, and the syllable became open by adding mute е.

The changes in the Early New English consonants resulted in the loss of consonants in certain positions. Thus the sound l is lost in combinations before k,m, f, v (talk, walk). Some of these words, however, preserve the sound in the American variant of the English language. The sound l was preserved in the words of Latin origin such as resolve, dissolve. It was also lost after a vowel before d in should, could, would. The sound b was dropped in combination mb when at the end of the word and not followed by another consonant; lamb, climb, t in combination mn, t in combinations stl, stn, ftm, stm and ktl.

The consonants were lost in some initial clusters: g and k in gn, kn (knee, knock, knife); w before consonant (manly r) was lost at the beginning of the words (wrinkle, wring, wrist). The sound h disappered in many unstressed syllables (save for American variant of the language where in some cases it is preserved): forehead, perhaps, shepherd. Qualitative change of consonants is illustrated by voicing fricatives when preceding vowel was unstressed: s – z (dessert, resemble); f–v (of, but adverb off is usually stressed and the sound is not voiced). The simplification of the consonant clusters that took place in the New English period are shown in the table:

Table 5

Consonant Changes in New English