Development of New Diphthongs in ME.

Development of Diphthongs.

One of the most important sound changes in the Early ME period was the loss of OE diphthongs:

Table 3

Development of Old English Diphthongs in Early Middle English

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 dæ3>ME day [dai]. These changes gave rise to 2 sets of diphthongs: with i-glides and u-glides. The same types of diphthongs appeared also from other sources:

Table 4

Growth of New Diphthongs in Middle English

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-glides and u-glides) but were not contrasted through quantity as long to short.

System of Vowels in Late Middle English.

Table 5

Middle English Vowels (the Age of Chaucer, Late 14th c.)

As seen from the table, the system of vowels in Late ME was no longer symmetrical. The OE balance of long and short vowels had been disrupted and was never restored again.

The Great Vowel Shift.

Early NE witnessed the greatest event in the history of Eng­lish vowels — the Great Vowel Shift, — which involved the change of all ME long monophthongs, and probably some of the diphthongs. The changes can be defined as “independent”, as they were not caused by any apparent phonetic conditions in the syllable or in the word, but affected regularly every stressed long vowel in any position.

The changes included in the Great Vowel Shift are shown in Table 6 with some intermediate stages and examples. (It seems reasonable to add to this list the development of the ME diphthong [au] which was narrowed and contracted to [ב:] during the same period, though it is not usually included in the Shift.)

Table 6

The Great Vowel Shift

As seen from the table all the vowels became closer and some of the vowels occupied the place of the next vowel in the column: thus [e:]> [i:], while the more open [ε: ] took the place of [e:l, and later moved one step further in the same direction and merged with the former [e: ] in [i:]. Likewise, the long [o:] was shifted one step, to become [u:], while ME [u:] changed to [au]. Some long vowels— [u:], [i:] and [a:] — broke into diphthongs, the first element being contrasted to the second as a more open sound: [au], [ai] and [ei], respectively.

It should be obvious that the Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sounds to the vowel system; in fact, every vowel which developed under the Shift can be found in Late ME. And nevertheless the Great Vowel Shift was the most profound and comprehensive change in the history of English vowels: every long vowel, as well as some diphthongs, was “shifted”, and the pronunciation of all the words with these sounds was altered.

It is important to note that the Great Vowel Shift (unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes) was not followed by any regular spelling changes: as seen from the examples the modification in the pronunciation of words was not reflected in their written forms.

During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed, for they contained long vowels.

Cf. the names of some English letters before and after the shift:

ME: A [a:], E [e:], 0 [o:], I [i:], B [be:], K [ka:].

NE: A [ei], E [i:], 0 [ou], I [ai], B [bi:], K [kei].

(By comparing the names of Mod E letters A, 0, E, and I with the familiar Latin names of the same letters one can easily form an idea of the shift (only three more changes [u:]> [au:], [o:]> [u:] and [au] > [ב:] have to be added).

It is also easy to deduce the changes from comparing the written and spoken forms of many modern words, e.g. time [‘ti:m∂] becomes [taim], make [‘ma:k∂] becomes [meik].)

The Great Vowel Shift has attracted the attention of many linguists (K. Luick, O: Jespersen, F. Mosse, A. Martinet, B. Trnka, V. Plotkin and others), but the problem of the Great Vowel Shift remains unresolved. If we take into account not only the development of vowels in Standard English, but also the vowel changes in the local British dialects, it will appear that the consistency of the changes has been somewhat exaggerated. In many dialects some vowels were not subjected to the Great Vowel Shift or were modified differently. Since the system of Standard English has absorbed various dialectal features at all levels, we may surmise that the Great Vowel Shift, which chronologically coincides with the formation of the nation-wide Standard, was to a certain extent merely a final choice from dialectal variants in pronunciation accepted in literary English and recognised as correct by grammarians and phoneticians. This choice was conditioned not only by intralinguistic systemic factors but also by the linguistic situation, especially the relationship between the coexisting varieties of the language, which they represented.