Theme: Great vowel shift in Middle English. Introduction. Great vowel shift in English language. Middle English vowel system. Vowels in the unstressed position Vowels under stress The Development of Vowel System in Middle English Phonetical changes

Trisyllabic Vowel Shortening

In words of more than two syllables the stressed long word was often shortened. This applies in particular to French loans which had more than two syllables in a suffixed form, e.g. with nouns of quality derived from adjectives, cf. divine with a long /i:/ in the second syllable but a short /ɪ/ in the noun divinity. Because the Great Vowel Shift (see below) only affected long vowels the pronunciation of the shorter word form with the long form was later altered but not than of the trisyllabic word, i.e. /dɪˡvi:n/ became /dɪˡvain/