Voicing of Consonants in Early New English

Change	illustrated	Examples
ME	NE	ME	NE
s	z	resemblen [r∂'sembl∂n]	resemble
		foxes ['foks∂s]	foxes
		was [was]	was
		is [is]	is
		his [his]	his
f	v	pensif [pen'sif]	pensive
		of [of]	of
θ	ð	there |'θε:r∂]	there
		they [θei]	they
		with [wiθ]	with
ks	gz	anxietie [aŋksie'ti∂]	anxiety
		luxurious [luksju:r'iu:s]	luxurious
t∫	d3	knowleche ['knoul∂t∫]	knowledge
		Greenwich ['gre:nwit∫]	Greenwich
			['gri:nid3]

The phonetic conditions of the Early NE voicing of fricatives and sibilants resemble those of Verner's Law in PQ; that is why O. Jespersen called this voic­ing “Verner's Law in Early New English”.

On the whole the Early NE voicing of fricatives was rather inconsistent and irregular. Though it was a positional change occurring in certain phonetic conditions, these conditions were often contradictory. The voicing had many exceptions; for instance, in assemble, assess we find a medial voiceless [s] in precisely the same environment as the voiced [z] of resemble and possess.

Loss of Consonants.

As was mentioned in the description of vowel changes, particularly the growth of new diphthongs and long monophthongs, a number of consonants disappeared: they were vocalised and gave rise to diphthong­al glides or made the preceding short vowels long. The vocalisation of [γ] in Early ME and of [x] in Late ME eliminated the back lingual fricative consonants.

With the disappearance of [x'] the system lost one more opposition — through palatalisation, as “hard” to “soft”. (The soft [k’] and [g’] turned into affricates some time earlier.

Another important event was the loss of quantitative distinc­tions in the consonant system.

It should be recalled that in OE long consonants were opposed to short at the phonological level. This is confirmed by their occurrence in identical conditions, their phonological application and the consistent writing of double letters, especially in intervocal position. In Late ME long consonants were shortened and the phonemic opposi­tion through quantity was lost.

The loss of long consonant phonemes has been attributed to a va­riety of reasons. Long consonants disappeared firstly because their functional load was very low (the opposition was neutralised everywhere except intervocally), and secondly, because length was becoming a prosodic feature, that is a property of the syllable rather than of the sound. In ME the length of the syllable was regulated by the lengthening and shortening of vowels; therefore the quantitative differences of the con­sonants became irrelevant.

In addition to all these changes, which directly affected the system of phonemes, some consonants underwent positional changes which restricted their use in the language. The consonants [j] and [r] were vocalised under certain phonetic conditions — finally and before consonants — during the ME and Early NE periods, though they con­tinued to be used in other environments, e. g. initially: ME rechen, NE reach; ME yeer, NE year. Some consonants were lost in consonant clusters, which became simpler and easier to pronounce, e.g. the initial [x] survived in ME as an aspirate [h], when followed by a vowel, but was lost when followed by a sonorant; cf. OE he, hund> ME he [he:], hound [hu:nd] (NE he, hound) and OE hlæne which became ME leene ['le:n∂] (NE lean).

In Early NE the aspirate [h] was lost initially before vowels — though not in all the words, e.g. ME honour [ho'nu:r]>NE honour, ME hit or it >NE it, but ME hope ['ho:p∂]>NE hope.

In Early NE the initial consonant sequences [kn] and [gn] were simplified to [n], as in ME knowen ['know∂n], gnat [gnat], NE know, gnat. Simplification of final clusters produced words like NE dumb, climb, in which [mb] lost the final [b].

Historical Foundations of Modern English Spelling.

The alphabetic way of writing (unlike hieroglyphic, pictographic and syllabic writing) was originally based on a phonetic prin­ciple: it was designed to give an accurate graphic representation of pronunciation by using letters to indicate sounds. Mod E spelling dis­plays many deviations from this principle. The differences between the pronunciation and the spelling of words are obvious, especially to those who are familiar with the employment of Latin letters in other languages. The reasons for these discrepancies and for the peculiarities of English spelling are to be found in the history of English sounds.

OE spelling was phonetic: OE notaries employed Latin char­acters in accord with the Latin written convention, to put down English words as best they could. They attempted to use a separate letter for each distinct sound; the sound values of the letters were for the most part the same as in Latin. Their spellings, however, were not absolutely consistent, for some letters — as far as we can judge today — indicat­ed two or more sounds: the letter 3 stood for four different phonemes, c — for two; f, ð, þ and s indicated two allophones each (which developed into phonemes later). On the whole, OE spellings were fairly good tran­scriptions of words, made with the help of Latin characters.

ME spelling innovations incorporated many sound changes which had taken place since the 9th-10th c, and yet spelling had gen­erally become more ambiguous and conventional. In many instances the one-to-one correspondence of letter and sound had been lost. More letters than before had two sound values: o stood for [o], [u], long [ב:] and [o:]; c — for [s] and [k]; g — for [g] and [d3], etc.; u could even indicate three sounds — the vowels [u] and [y] and the consonant [v]. One and the same sound was commonly shown by different means: [d3] could be indicated by g, j or dg, [k] — by k, c and q, etc. The digraphs introduced in ME look familiar to the modern reader, since many of them are still in use, but their application in ME was rather contradictory: so that they did not make spelling either more precise or more phonetic. For instance, both ou and ow were used for [u:] and [ou]; double o stood for the open and close long [ב:] and [o:] alongside 0; long [e:] and [ε:] were shown indiscriminately by [ie]­, double e and the single letter e. The use of digraphs was a digression from the phonetic principle, for it was based on conventional association between sounds and their graphic representation (e.g. th or dg did not indicate sequences of sounds, but were used as symbols of single sounds, [θ, ð] and [d3]). The conventional principle of spelling was later reinforced by the fixation of the written form of the word in printing and by extensive sound changes.

The introduction of printing and the spread of printed books perpetuated the written forms of the words reproduced from the manu­scripts. They reflected the pronunciation of the age and the accepted devices of spelling; numerous variant spellings characteristic of the manuscripts were employed unrestrictedly in the printed books of the late 15th and the 16th c.

The phoneticians and spelling reformers of the 16th c. strove to restrict the freedom of variation and to improve English orthography by a more consistent use of letters and digraphs, and by the introduction of new symbols.

They insisted upon a strict distinction between u and v when used to indicate a vowel and a consonant: [u] and [v], e.g. Early NE loue, selues, vnripe, vnshaken later spelt as love, selves, unripe, unshaken; upon the regular use of the final mute e to show the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable, e.g., rode, rose, and even beene, moone (though in the two latter words length was shown by double letters). They in­troduced new digraphs to show the difference between some open and close vowels, namely the digraph ea for [ε: ] as distinguished from e, ee, and ie used for the closed [e:], and the digraph oa alongside 0 in open syllables for [ב:], as contrasted to oo showing a long closed [o:]. Cf. ME eech, seke with [ε:] and [e:] and Early NE each, seek; ME hooly and Early NE holy. The use of double consonants became less frequent, except in traditional spellings like kiss, sell, but double letters were sometimes employed to show that the preceding vowel was short: Early NE sitten, sholt, dipped (later sit, shot, dipped).

The activities of the scholars in the period of normalisation — late 17th and the 18th c. — had a stabilising effect on the development of English spelling. The dictionaries and grammars fixed the written forms of the words as obligatory standards; numerous variant spellings of the Early NE period went out of use. Apart from the standardisation of spelling — which was certainly a great achievement of that age — only a few innovations were made: a few new digraphs were adopted with borrowed words, such as ph, ps — NE photograph, psychology, ch — NE chemistry, scheme and machine, g — genre.

In the 18th c. the sound changes slowed down. Standard pronunciation (later known as RP — Received Pronunciation) and standard spelling were firmly established, and the gap between the spoken and written form of the word was perpetuated. The conventional use of letters had prevailed over their original, “phonetic” use.