Origin of Old English Consonants (assimilation, loss, metathesis, rhotacism, etc).

CONSONANT CHANGES IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH.

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 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 in functional words and auxiliaries that are never stressed; when preceded by an unstressed and followed by a stressed vowel. For ex.(tabl)

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).

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]);

Grimm’s law: THE FIRST CONSONANT SHIFTS took place in the V-II cent. BC. Jacobs Grimm’s Law in 1822. According to Grimm, he classified consonant correspondences between indoeuropean and germanic stops (plosives).

There are 3 acts of this law:

IE voiceless plosives p, t, k correspond to Gmc voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h. Eg: пламя – flame,пескарь – fish, тысяча – thousand, три – three, кардиc – heart.
IE voiced plosives b, d, g, → Gmc voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: болото - pool, kardia – heart, дерево – tree, десять – ten, иго - yoke.
IE aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh → to voiced plosives without aspiration b d g. Eg: bhrāta – brother, rudhira – red, ghostis – guest.

consonant correspondences					Latin	OE	ModE
1. [p, t, k] à voiceless stops/plosive		[f, q, h] à voiceless fricatives		[v, ð/d, g] voiced fricatives	septem	seofen	seven
					pater	fæđer	father
					socrus	swaiho(Gothic)	Schwager(Grm)
2. rhotacism					Ausis (Lith-an)	Auso (Gothic)	ear,Ohr (Grm)
[s] à	[z] à		[r]

THE SECOND CONSONANT SHIFT was Carl Verner’s law (only in Old High German). According C.Verner all the common Gmc consonants became voiced in intervocalic position if the preceding vowel was unstressed (a change takes place in the course of time).

p-f->v(табл-1строка) t-Ө >đ,d-табл2строка

k-x > j, g – 3с

s -z> r auris – ēare

Devoicing took place in early common Gmc when the stress was not yet fixed on the root.

A variety of Verner’s law is RHOTACISM (greek letter rho). [s] →[z]→[r] we find traces of this phenomenon in form of the verb to be →was – were, is – are; ist – sind – war.

II consonant shift occured in dialects of sothern Gmc. Eg: еда – eat – essen, вода – water – wasser, hope – hoffen, bed – bett.

Ch (G) → C (OE) : reich – ricostan.