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Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
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Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
Main Trends in the Changes of Stressed Vowels
§ 368. No other part of the English sound system has undergone such sweeping changes as the vowels in stressed syllables. They changed both in quality and quantity, under the influence of the environment and independently, alone and together with the surrounding sounds As a matter of fact, not a single OE long monophthong or diphthong has remained unaltered in the course of history; only a few short vowels were not changed, unless they were lengthened and then shared the fate of long vowels (for instance, short [i] and [o] have not suffered any changes in is and of — OE is, of, but the same sounds have developed into diphthongs if they became long: OE blind > ME blind [bli: nd] > NE blind, OE hopa > ME hope [hɔ: pə ] > NE hope). § 389. The system of vowel phonemes has undergone drastic changes in the course of English linguistic history. Though the total number of phonemes has practically remained the same, their distinctive features and the principles of their opposition in the system, have altered. Strictly speaking we can observe all kinds of vowel changes in all historical periods. And yet some prevailing trends of evolution can be singled out for certain groups of vowels at certain periods. Long vowels were the most changeable and historically unstable group of English sounds. At all times they displayed a strong tendency to become narrower and to diphthongise, whereas short vowels displayed a reverse trend — towards greater openness, though this trend was less obvious and less consistent. Qualitative and quantitative changes were intertwined and often proceeded together. It may be recalled here that in Early OE the prevalent type of vowel changes were assimilative changes mainly affecting the quality of the vowels. Towards the end of OE quantitative vowel changes gained momentum. Early ME is mainly characterised by positional quantitative changes of monophthongs; at the same time profound independent changes affected the system of diphthongs: OE diphthongs were monophthongised and lost, and new types of diphthongs developed from vowels and consonants. Late ME saw the beginnings of a new series of sweeping changes: independent qualitative changes of all long vowels known as the " Great Vowel Shift"; it lasted from the 14th till the 17th or even 18th c. Numerous positional vowel changes of this period — together with vocalisation of consonants — gave rise to a number of new long monophthongs and diphthongs. QUANTITATIVE VOWEL CHANGES IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH § 370. At the end of OE and in the immediately succeeding centuries accented vowels underwent a number of quantitative changes which affected the employment and the phonological status of short and long vowels in the language. It should be recalled that in OE quantity was the main basis of correlation in the vowel system; short vowels were phonemically opposed to long ones, roughly identical in quality. At that time vowel length was for the most part an inherited feature: OE short vowels had developed from PG short vowels, while long ones went back to long vowels or bi-phonemic vowel sequences (except for a few lengthenings, mainly due to the loss of consonants, see § 143, 144). In later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions. §371. The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters; it occurred in Early ME or perhaps even in Late OE. (1) Short vowels were lengthened before two homorganic consonants, a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild > ME wild [wi: ld] (NE wild); (2)All other groups of two or more consonants produced the reverse effect: they made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OE cē pte > ME kepte ['keptə ] (NE kept); OE bewildrian > ME bewildren [be'wildrə n] (NE bewilder). (Cf. the latter example with wild given above; the third consonant [r] in ME bewildren prevented the lengthening.) § 372. Another decisive alteration in the treatment of vowel quantity took place some time later: in the 12th or 13th c. (3) Short vowels became long in open syllables. This lengthening mainly affected the more open of the short vowels [e], [a] and [o], but sometimes, though very seldom, it is also found in the close vowels, [i]and [u]. In the process of lengthening close vowels acquired a more open quality, e.g..
In spite of some restrictions (e.g. no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodiʒ > ME body ['bodi] (NE body), the alteration affected many words (see Table 1 on p. 194). § 373. The changes of vowel quantity reduced the number of positions in which the opposition of long vowels to short ones could be used for phonemic contrast. Before a consonant cluster vowel quantity was now predetermined by the nature of the cluster; and in open syllables three vowels — [ɔ ], [a: ] and [ɛ: ] were always long. Consequently, opposition through quantity could be used for distinction, as a phonological feature, only in the absence of those phonetic conditions, namely: in closed syllables, in polysyllabic words, or with the vowels [i] and [u] in open syllables. Such is the contrast, e.g. in ME risen ['ri: zə n] inf. and risen ['rizə n] Part. II (NE rise, risen). The limitations in the application of vowel length as a distinctive feature undermined the role of vowel quantity in the language. § 374. Quantitative vowel changes in Early ME have given rise to a number of explanations and hypotheses. AH the changes in vowel quantity have been interpreted as manifestations of a sort of rhythmic tendency. In order to achieve an average uniformity in the length of the syllable, and also to use an average amount of energy for its pronunciation, the vowel was shortened before a group of consonants and was made longer if there were no consonants following, that is, in " open" syllables. Lengthening of vowels before homorganic groups looks as an exception or a contradiction; to account for this lengthening it was suggested that -nd, -ld and the like were virtually equivalent to single consonants, therefore a long vowel would not make the syllable too heavy. Table 1 Quantitative Vowel Changes in Late Old English and Early Middle English
This theory was criticised for attributing all the quantitative changes to one general cause — the effort to maintain a uniform syllable length — though in reality the changes were not simultaneous. Lengthening in open syllables occurred at a later period — some time in the 13th c. — and may have been caused by other factors. To cope with this difficulty, it was suggested that lengthening in open syllables was tied up with the weakening of final vowels; when the second, unaccented, syllable was weakened, the first syllable became more prominent and the vowel was made longer. Cf. OE talu and ME tale ['ta: lə ] — the average amount of energy required for the pronunciation of the word is the same but its distribution is different. QUALITATIVE VOWEL CHANGES IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH Development of Monophthongs § 375. As compared with quantitative changes, qualitative vowel changes in Early ME were less important. They affected several monophthongs and displayed considerable dialectal diversity. On the whole they were independent of phonetic environment. The OE close labialised vowels [y] and [y: ] disappeared in Early ME, merging with various sounds in different dialectal areas. The treatment of [y] and [y: ] in ME can be regarded as evidence of growing dialectal divergence. At the same time it is a relatively rare instance of similar alterations of a short and a long vowel. The vowels [y] and [y: ] existed in OE dialects up to the 10th c, when they were replaced by [e], [e: ] in Kentish and confused with [ie] and [ie: ] or [i], [i: ] in WS. In Early ME the dialectal differences grew. In some areas OE [y], [y: ] developed into [e], [e: ], in others they changed to [i], [i: ]; in the South-West and in the West Midlands the two vowels were for some time preserved as [y], [y: ] but later were moved backward and merged with [u], [u: ]. (The existence of [y] as a separate vowel may have been prolonged by the borrowing of French words with this sound, e.g. ME vertu, nature were at first pronounced as [ver'ty: ], [na'ty: r], later as [ver'tju: ], [na'tju: r] (NE virtue, nature).
Development of Old English [y] and [y: ] in Middle English dialects The map[38] and the examples show the treatment of OE [y], [y: ] in ME dialects: Examples
ME pronunciations illustrate the variation stage; the NE words given in the last column show the final stage of the change: selection of one of co-existing variants in Standard English. For the most part NE forms descend from the East Midland dialect, which made the basis of the literary language; this is also true of the word hill shown in the map and of the words fire, king, kiss, kin, little and many others. Some modern words, however, have preserved traces of other dialects: e.g. NE sleeve going back to OE slӯ fe entered Standard English from the South-Eastern regions with the sound [e: ] (which later regularly changed to [i: ], see the Great Vowel Shift § 383 ff). Sometimes we can find traces of several dialects in one word; thus NE busy (OE bysiʒ )comes from an East Midland form with til as far as sounds go, but has retained a trace of the Western form in the spelling: the letter u points to the Western reflex of [y]; likewise the letter u in NE bury (OE byrian)is a trace of the Western forms, while the sound [e] comes from the South-East (Kent).
Development of Old English [a: ] in Middle English dialects § 376. In Early ME the long OE [a: ] was narrowed to [ɔ: ]. This was an early instance of the growing tendency of all long monophthongs to become closer; the tendency was intensified in Late ME when all Jong vowels changed in that direction. [a: ] became [ɔ: ] in all the dialects except the Northern group (see the map above).
The resulting ME [ɔ: ] must have been a more open vowel than the long [o: ] inherited from OE, e.g. OE fō t, ME foot [fo: t] (NE foot). Judging by their earlier and later history the two phonemes [ɔ: ] and [o: ] were well distinguished in ME, though no distinction was made in spelling: o, and double o were used for both sounds. (The open [o: ] also developed from the short [o] due to lengthening in open syllables, see § 372).[41] § 377. The short OE [æ ] was replaced in ME by the back vowel [a]. In OE [æ ] was either a separate phoneme or one of a group of allophones distinguished in writing [æ, a, ā, ea] (see § 123). All these sounds were reflected in ME as [a], except the nasalised [ā ] which became [o] in the West Midlands (and thus merged with a different phoneme [o] or [ɔ ].[42]
See the map on p. 198 and the examples showing the splitting of [ā ] in different dialects:
Most of the modern words going back to the OE prototypes with the vowel [ā ] have [a], e.g. NE man, sand, and, which means that they came from any dialect except West Midland; some words, however, especially those ending in [ŋ ], should be traced to the West Midlands, e.g. long, song, strong, from, bond (but also sand, rang and band, to be distinguished from bond). Development of Diphthongs § 378. One of the most important sound changes of the Early ME period was the loss of OE diphthongs and the growth of new diphthongs, with new qualitative and quantitative distinctions. OE possessed a well developed system of diphthongs: falling diphthongs with a closer nucleus and more open glide arranged in two symmetrical sets — long and short: [ea:, eo:, ie: ] and [ea, eo, ie] (see § 133). Towards the end of the OE period some of the diphthongs merged with monophthongs: all diphthongs were monophthongised before [xt, x't] and after [sk']; the diphthongs [ie:, ie] in Late WS fused with [y:, y] or [i:, i]. Their further development does not differ from the development of corresponding monophthongs.
Development of Old English [ā ] in Middle English dialects § 379. In Early ME the remaining diphthongs were also contracted to monophthongs: the long [ea: ] coalesced with the reflex of OE [æ; ] — ME [ɛ : ]; the short [ea]ceased to be distinguished from OE [æ ] and became [a] in ME; the diphthongs [eo:, eo] — as well as their dialectal variants [io:, io] — fell together with the monophthongs [e:, e, i:, i]. Later they shared in the development of respective monophthongs. The changes of OE diphthongs are shown in Table 2 together with the changes of corresponding monophthongs. § 380. As a result of these changes the vowel system lost two sets of diphthongs, long and short. In the meantime a new set of diphthongs developed from some sequences of vowels and consonants due to the vocalisation of OE [j] and [γ ], that is to their change into vowels, In Early ME the sounds [j] and [γ ] between and after vowels changed into [i] and [u] and formed diphthongs together with the preceding vowels, e.g. OE dæ ʒ > ME day [dai]. These changes gave rise to two sets of diphthongs: with i-glides and u-glides. The same types of diphthongs appeared also from other sources: the glide -u developed from OE [w] as in OE snā w, which became ME snow [snou], and before [x] and [l] as in Late ME smaul (alongside smal)and taughte (NE snow, small, taught). In the two latter cases the consonants were not vocalised and the glide arose between the back consonant and the preceding vowel. See more examples in Table 3. (If the preceding vowels were [i] or [u] the results of the vocalisation were long monophthongs, e.g. OE niʒ on > ME nyne [ni: n(ə )], OE fuʒ ol > ME fowl [fu: l] (NE nine, fowl). Table 2 Development of Old English Diphthongs in Early Middle English
Table 3 Growth of New Diphthongs in Middle English
In addition to the diphthongs which developed from native sources, similar diphthongs — with i- and u-glides — are found in same ME loan-words, e.g. [ɔ i] in ME boy, joy, [au] in ME pause, cause ['pauzə, 'kauzə ]. (The diphthong [au] occurred also in French borrowings before a nasal, in imitation of Anglo-Norman pronunciation, e.g. ME straunge.) §381. The formation of new diphthongs in ME was an important event in the history of the language. By that time the OE diphthongs had been contracted into monophthongs; the newly formed ME diphthongs differed from the OE in structure: they had an open nucleus and a closer glide; they were arranged in a system consisting of two sets (with i-glirtes and u-glides) but were not contrasted through quantity as long to short. Популярное:
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