1. The comparative-historical method in linguistics

19. Middle English consonants. Middle English syntax.
Reduction to /ə/ and eventual loss of short vowels in unstressed syllables
 (lexical words: nama -> name, mete -> meat, nosu > nose, sunu -> son)
o function of silent <-e>?
 grammar words:
o folc(e), niht(e): dative falls in with nominative, accusative
o riht(e), freondlic(e): adverb falls in with adjective
o lufodon, lufoden: preterite indicative and subjunctive plural fall together
Loss (inconsistent) of unstressed final consonants following a vowel
o infinitive: helpan -> helpen -> help
o affixes: ānlic -> only
o pronouns: ic -> I, þin -> thi(n)
o article: án -> a(n)
o strong past participles: -en often stays, e.g. written, taken
These are among some quantitative sound changes:
o loss
o lengthening
o shortening
Middle English: Consonants
New phonemes: voiced fricatives /ð/, /v/, /z/
The situation in OE
o voiced fricatives were just allophones of voiceless fricatives
o fricatives were voiceless unless they were between voiced sounds
 [ð]: oðer
 [v]: hlāford, hēafod, hæfde
 [z]: frēosan, ceōsan, hūsian
A number of factors promoted the phonemicization of voiced fricatives:
o loanwords from French: vine (fine), view (few), veal (feel)
o but French lacks interdental fricatives or (with a few exceptions) word-initial /z/
o dialect mixing:
o (fox), vixen: southern English dialects
o loss of final (vowels in) unstressed syllables
o OE hūsian [z] -> -> ME house, hous /z/ (cf noun hous /s/)
o “voiced consonants require less energy to pronounce”: previously unvoiced fricatives became voiced in words receiving little or no stress in a sentence, like function words:
o e.g. [f] of -> /v/
o e.g. [s] in wæs, his -> /z/
o e.g. [θ] in þæt  -> /ð/
Changes in distribution of consonants
More systematic changes
o loss of ‘long’ consonants: OE man ‘one’, mann ‘man’
o OE /h/:
o word-initial [h]
 lost in clusters: OE hræfn, hlāford, hlūd
 (some evidence of ‘h-dropping’ word-initially)
 in words from French and Latin:
o e.g. oste ‘host’, onour ‘honour’
 written language can retard/block/reverse sound change
 in native words: e.g. OE hit ‘it’;
o (adde ‘had’; herthe ‘earth’)
o postvocalic [ç] or [x]
 still around in ME: light and laugh
 (ultimate fates: to zero or /f/)
o OE /g/:
o allophone [γ] (near l/r or between back vowels) vocalized to [u] or semivowel [w]:
 OE swelgan, sorg, boga
o allophone [j] (near front vowels) vocalized to [i]:
 OE genoh -> ME inough
 OE mægden -> maiden, OE sægde -> said
More sporadic changes:
 in lightly stressed words, voicing of fricatives: that, was
 loss of unstressed final consonants: OE ānlic -> only
 loss of /w/ after /s/ or /t/ and (especially) before rounded vowels
 OE swylc, swā
 OE twā, sweord
 but kept in twin, swim