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

Word Stress/Accent:

Shortening – all long vowels became short before consonant clusters (NB!! except [ld, nd, mb] – before these clusters vowels remained long or if a vowel was short it became long)

Other Consonant Clusters
OE	ME
fīftiζ	fifty (fifty)
fēdde	fedde (fed)
wīsdom	wisdom (wisdom)

Lengthening (12th – 13th c.) – short vowels became long:

• before clusters [ld, nd, mb];
• in 2-syllable words, only to [e, o, a] in open stressed syllable

Clusters [ld, nd, mb]		2-syllable words
OE	ME	OE	ME
cild	chīld (child)	mete	mēte (meat)
findan	fīnden (find)	open	ōpen (open)
climban	clīmben (climb)	talu	tāle (tale)

Vowels in the unstressed position

All vowels in the unstressed position underwent a qualitative change and became the vowel of the type of [ə] or [e] unstressed. This phonetic change had a far-reaching effect upon the system of the grammatical endings of the English words which now due to the process of reduction became homonymous.

For example:

forms of strong verbs

Old English writan – wrāt – writon – written

with the suffixes –an,-on,-en different only in the vowel component became homonymous in middle English:

written – wrōt – written

forms of nouns

However, during the 16th and the 17th centuries, there were many different mergers, and some mergers can be seen in individual Modern English words like great, which is pronounced with the vowel /eɪ/ as in mate rather than the vowel /iː/ as in meat.

After the Great Vowel Shift, some vowel phonemes began merging. Immediately after the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels of meet and meat were different, but they are merged in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as /miːt/.

The Great Vowel Shift changed vowels without merger so Middle English before the vowel shift had the same number of vowel phonemes as Early Modern English after the vowel shift.

This is a simplified picture of the changes that happened between late Middle English (late ME), Early Modern English (EModE), and today's English (ModE). Pronunciations in 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1900 are shown.[8] To hear recordings of the sounds, click the phonetic symbols0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,