3. Changes of oe Vowels:

a) Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English.

Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took place in English at every period of history.

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. All phonetic changes strictly conformed to the general pattern: the change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones, after the stage of increased variation some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place.

Stressed vowels in OE underwent a number of considerable changes both independent and dependent. As a result of these changes the number of vowels in stressed position grew as compared with the PG vowel system.

Scheme 1

Changes of Stressed Vowels in OE

↓ ↓

Independent Changes Dependent Changes

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

Development Development Accommodation Assimilation

of Monophthongs of Diphthongs / \ / \

Breaking Diphthongisation Palatal Mutation Fronting

The OE back vowels were more stable than the front ones. The OE front vowels underwent different changes very frequently. Especially the OE short front vowels changed very often.

1) Independent Changes.

The PG monophthongs and diphthongs underwent regular independent changes in Early OE: they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment.

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE: they were fronted and, in the process of fronting they split into several sounds.

The principal regular direction of the change is the following: [a]>[æ] and [a:]>[æ:]. This type of changes is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]:

e.g. Gt þata OE þæt NE that

OHG dâr OE þǽr NE there

Sometimes the PG [a] and [a:] could change to other sounds: [a] > [o], [a:] > [o:]. But these directions can be interpreted as changes under the influence of the succeeding nasal.

e.g. Gt mann OE mon NE man

OHG mano OE mona NE moon

The short [a] from PG [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

e.g. Gt magan OE maзan NE may

Scheme 2

Splitting of [a] and [a:] in Early OE

> æ independent >æ: independent

a { >o, a before a nasal a:{

>a before the syllable with a >o: before a nasal

As the result of the independent changes in OE the PG diphthongs* with the i-glide [ei, ai] were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:] respectively.

The diphthongs in - u [iu, eu, au] were reflected as long diphthongs [io:, eo:, ea:]

e.g. PG a+i > OE a: Gt ains OE ān NE one

i+u > OE io: Gt diups OE dēop, dīop NE deep

*Some scholars interpret these PG diphthongs [ei, ai, eu, au, ou] as sequence of two independent monophthongs. The process of fronting is considered to take place in the 5th c.