Changes affecting Consonants in ME.

CONSONANT CHANGES IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH.

Some consonants remained almost unchanged through historical periods, for ex. sonorants [m,n,l], the plosives [p,b,t,d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been changed. The most important developments were the growth of new sets of sounds, — affricates and sibilants (свистячие), — and the new phonological treatment of fricatives,some consonants were lost or vocalized.

GROWTH OF SIBILANTS AND AFFRICATES In OE there were no affricates and no sibilants, except [s, z]

The earliest traces of these sounds appeared in the end of OE or in Early ME. These consonants developed from OE palatal plosives [k', g'] In Early ME they began to be indicated by special letters and digraphs, which came into use under the influence of the French scribal tradition — ch, tch, g, dg, sh, ssh, sch.For ex.: [k’] à[t∫]: cild [k’il’d]- child [t∫ild], [g’] à[dζ]: ecge [‘egg’] edge [‘edζ], [sk’] à[∫]: fisc [fisk’]- fish [fi∫].

ME	NE	ME	NE
[sj] à	[∫]	commissioun [komi’sjon]	commission [kə’mi∫ən]
[zj] à	[ζ]	pleasure [ple’zjur]	pleasure [‘pleζə]
[tj] à	[t∫]	nature [na’tjur]	nature [‘neit∫ə]
[dj] à	[dζ]	procedure [,pros’djur]	procedure [prə’si dζə]

Another development accounting for the APPEARANCE of sibilants and affricates in the English language is dated in Early NE and is connected with the phonetic assimilation of lexical borrowings. In the numerous loan-words of Romance origin adopted in ME and Early NE the stress fell on the final or last but one syllabic. In accordance with the phonetic tendencies the stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. The final syllables which thus became unstressed, or weakly stressed, underwent phonetic alterations: the vowels were reduced and sometimes dropped; the sounds making up the syllable became less distinct. As a result some sequences of consonants fused into single consonants.

↑ PALATALISATION – as a result of reduction of unstressed vowels several consonants merged into one. There were some exceptions though, e.g. mature, duty, due, suit, statue, tune, etc
TREATMENT OF FRICATIVE CONSONANTS IN ME AND EARLY NE

ME	NE	ME	NE
[s] à	[z]	possess [pə’ses]	possess [pə’zes]
[q] à	[ð]	this [qis],the [qə], there [qεə]	this [ðis],the [ðə], there [ðεə]
[f] à	[v]	of [of]	of [ov]
[ks] à	[gz]	anxiety [,ən’ksaiəti]	anxiety [,ən’gzaiəti]
[t∫] à	[dζ]	knowledge [‘kno:lət∫ə]	knowledge [‘no:lidζ]

16th c. The fricatives were voiced under certain phonetic conditions. They were voiced: in functional words and auxiliaries that are never stressed; when preceded by an unstressed and followed by a stressed vowel. For ex.(tabl)

In Early NE voicing of fricatives was rather irregular.

LOSS OF CONSONANTS the system of consonants underwent important changes in ME and Early NE.

A number of consonants disappeared: they were vocalized and gave rise to diphthongal glides' or made the preceding short vowels long.

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

Another important event was the loss of quantitative distinctions in the consonant system.In Late ME long consonants were shortened and the phonemic opposition through quantity was lost.

THE REASONS OF LOSS OF LONG CONSONANT PHONEMES: 1.because their functional load was very low 2.because length was becoming a prosodic feature, that is a property of the syllable rather than of the sound. Some consonants underwent positional changes which restricted their use in the language. The consonants [∫] and [r] were vocalized under certain phonetic conditions — finally and before consonants. [r] was vocalised at the end of the word in the 16^th -17^th c.; [j] disappeared as a result of palatalisation); [j] remained only initially (e.g. year, yard, etc.); [h, h’] were lost (e.g. ME taughte [‘tauhtə] – NE taught [to:t], ME night [nih’t] – NE night [neit] [kn] à [n] (e.g. ME know [knou] – NE know [nou]); [gn] à [n] (e.g. ME gnat [gnat] – NE gnat [næt])