Old English phonology
Encyclopedia
The phonology
of Old English
is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved purely as a written language
. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus
of Old English, and the written language apparently indicates phonological alternation
s quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.
s or phoneme
s) of Old English is as shown below.
1. The exact nature of Old English r is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant [ɹ], as in most Modern English accents, an alveolar flap [ɾ], or an alveolar trill
[r]. In this article we will use the symbol /r/ indiscriminately to stand for this phoneme.
s: is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated
s, each with a short and long version, for a total of 14 monophthong
s. Certain dialects add an eighth vowel, for a total of 16.
The front
mid
rounded vowels /ø(ː)/ occur in some dialect
s of Old English, but not in the best attested Late West Saxon dialect. This latter dialect also contained the monophthongization of the ie/īe diphthong to i known as an unstable i (note variant spellings of geliefan and gelifan). The unstable i was then rounded to a y (gelyfan), the only exceptions being those in a proximity to c, g and h (thus is the case with forms like gifan from Early West Saxon giefan). This sound change of the ie diphthong developed alongside the other y resulting from i-mutation. There is also historical evidence suggesting that short /e/ and /o/ were phonetically lower and/or more centralized (perhaps [ɛ] and [ɔ]) than the corresponding long ones.
s, each with short and long
versions, for a total of 6.
2. It is uncertain whether the diphthongs spelt ie/īe were pronounced [i(ː)y] or [i(ː)e]. The fact that this diphthong was merged with /y(ː)/ in many dialects suggests the former.
s as:
Nevertheless there are very few environments in which both the velars and the palatals can occur; in most environments only one or the other set occurs. Also, the two sets alternate with each other in ways reminiscent of allophones, for example:
(In the standardized orthography used on this page, c stands for /k/, ċ for /tʃ/, g for /ɡ/ and [ɣ], and ġ for /j/ and [dʒ]. The geminates of these are spelled cc, ċċ, cg, ċġ.)
The best way to explain the distribution of c~ċ and g~ġ is through historical linguistics
. The PGmc ancestor of both c and ċ is ; the ancestor of both g and ġ is . Palatalization
of to ċ and of to ġ happened in the following environments:
The velars remained velar, however, before back vowels that underwent i-mutation (umlaut):
Palatalization was undone before consonants in OE:
The palatalization of PGmc to OE /ʃ/ (spelt sċ) is much less restricted: word-initially it is found before back vowels and r as well as in the environments where ċ and ġ are found.
Non-initially palatalization to sċ is found before PGmc front vowels and j, and after front vowels in OE, but not before an OE back vowel
In addition to /j/ from the palatalization of PGmc , Old English also has /j/ from PGmc , which could stand before back vowels:
Many instances where a ċ/c, ġ/g, or sċ/sc alternation would be expected within a paradigm, it was levelled out by analogy
at some point in the history of the language. For example, the velar of sēcþ "he seeks" has replaced the palatal of sēċan "to seek" in Modern English; on the other hand, the palatalised forms of besēċan have replaced the velar forms, giving modern beseech.
, which is much closer to the common West Germanic ancestor of both languages. The processes took place chronologically in the order described below (with uncertainty in ordering as noted).
Various conventions are used below for describing Old English words, reconstructed parent forms of various sorts, and reconstructed Proto-West-Germanic (PWG), Proto-Germanic (PG) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) forms:
underwent a sound change in their development from Proto-West Germanic by which ā [ɑː], unless followed by /n, m/ or nasalized, was fronted to ǣ [æː]. This is part of a process known in the literature as Anglo-Frisian brightening. Note that nasalized āN was unaffected, and was later raised to ōN (see below). Similarly, the sequences ān, ām were unaffected and later raised to ōn, ōm. (It can be assumed, therefore, that a nasal consonant n, m caused a preceding long vowel to nasalize.)
stáin, Old High German
stein). In many cases the resulting [ɑː] was later fronted to [æː] by i-mutation
, e.g. dǣlan "to divide" (cf. Old Frisian dēla vs. Gothic dáiljan, Old High German teilen).
See a-restoration below for examples.
Importantly, a-fronting was blocked by n, m only in stressed syllables, not unstressed syllables. This accounts for forms like ġefen (archaic ġefæn) "given" from Proto-Germanic *gebanaz. However, the infinitive ġefan retains its back vowel because it was followed by a nasal vowel in Proto-Germanic, which blocked the fronting: *gebanaN. This provides evidence that the fronting occurred before the loss of final -aN, which occurred before the earliest written records of any West Germanic language.
s in most languages are of the "closing" type, where the second segment is higher (if possible) than the first, e.g. Modern English /ai, au, oi, ei, ou/. Proto-Germanic likewise had /ai, au, eu/ and [iu] ([iu] was an allophone of /eu/ when an /i/ or /j/ followed in the next syllable). Old English, however, had unusual "harmonic" diphthongs, where both segments were of the same height: ea /æɑ/, eo, /eo/, io /iu/, ie /iy/. Note that all of these diphthongs could occur both
short (monomoraic
), i.e. /æ̆ă, ĕŏ, ĭŭ, ĭy̆/, and long (bimoraic), i.e. /æa, eo, iu, iy/. Note also that the spelling of the diphthongs differs somewhat from their assumed pronunciation. The interpretations ea /æa/ and eo /eo/ are generally accepted (evidence for the former comes from various sources, e.g. the behavior of breaking and back mutation [see below]) and the Middle English
development of ea into the short low-central vowel /a/). However, the interpretations io /iu/ and especially ie /iy/ are controversial, with many (especially more traditional) sources assuming that the pronunciation matched the spelling, i.e. io /io/ and ie /ie/ — that is, these diphthongs were of the "opening" rather than harmonic type.
The process that produced harmonic diphthongs from earlier closing diphthongs is called diphthong height harmonization. Specifically, the second segment of a diphthong was changed to be the same height as the first segment. Proto-Germanic diphthongs were affected as follows:
Note that the remaining Old English diphthongs were due to other processes, such as breaking, back mutation and i-mutation
.
Late in the development of the standard West Saxon dialect, io (both long and short) became eo, merging with existing eo. This is in fact one of the most noticeable differences between early Old English (c. 900 AD) and late Old English (c. 1000 AD).
in Old English is the diphthong
ization of the short front vowels /i, e, æ/ to short (monomoraic
) /ĭŭ, ĕŏ, æ̆ɑ̆/ when followed by /h/ or by /r/ or /l/ plus another consonant. Long ī, ǣ similarly broke to iu, ea, but only when followed by /h/. Note that /l/ in coda position has a velar quality (the "dark l" allomorph on present-day English all, cold), and is therefore indicated as [ɫ]. The geminates rr and ll usually count as r or l plus another consonant, although ll produced by West Germanic gemination
doesn't count. (More correctly, /i/ or /j/ in the following syllable prevents breaking from occurring.)
Note that /ĭŭ, iu/ were lowered to /ĕŏ, eo/ in late Old English (see above).
The exact conditions for breaking vary somewhat depending on the sound being broken:
Examples:
The i-mutation of broken /iu, eo, æa/ (whether long or short) is spelled ie (possibly /iy/, see above).
Examples:
Note that in some dialects /æ/ was backed (retracted) to /a/ (/ɑ/) rather than broken, when occurring in the circumstances described above that would normally trigger breaking. This happened in the dialect of Anglia that partially underlies Modern English, and explains why Old English ceald appears as Modern English "cold" (actually from Anglian Old English cald) rather than "*cheald" (the expected result of ceald).
Both breaking and retraction are fundamentally phenomena of assimilation
to a following velar consonant. Note that /w/ is in fact a velar consonant, while /h/, /l/, and /r/ are less obviously so. It is therefore assumed that, at least at the time of the occurrence of breaking and retraction, /h/ was pronounced [x] or similar — at least when following a vowel — and /l/ and /r/ before a consonant had a velar or retroflex quality and were pronounced [ɫ] and [ɹ], or similar. Breaking and retraction occurred several hundred years before recorded Old English. However, based on evidence from Middle and Modern English, it is assumed that /l/ and /r/ maintained the same velar/retroflex allophones in the same contexts into recorded Old English. As for /h/, the later changes of h-loss and palatalization indicate that some changes occurred in the allophones of /h/; see above.
in the following syllable. This is called "a-restoration" because it partly restored original /a/, which had earlier been fronted to /æ/ (see above). (Note: The situation is complicated by a later change in some dialects called "Second Fronting" that fronted short restored /a/ to /æ/ for the second time, while raising /æ/ to /e/. This did not affect the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English.)
Because strong masculine and neuter nouns have back vowels in the plural, alternations like /æ/ in the singular vs. /a/ in the plural are common in this noun class:
A-restoration occurred before the *ō of the weak verb suffix *-ōj-, although this surfaces in Old English as the front vowel i, as in "to make" < *makōjan-.
Breaking (see above) occurred between a-fronting and a-restoration. This order is necessary to account for words like slēan "to slay" (actually pronounced /slæɑn/) from original *slahan: /slahan/ > /slæhan/ (a-fronting) > /slæ̆ɑ̆hɑn/ (breaking; inhibits a-restoration) > /slæ̆ɑ̆ɑn/ (h-loss) > /slæɑn/ (vowel coalescence, compensatory lengthening).
A-restoration interacted in a tricky fashion with a-fronting (Anglo-Frisian brightening) to produce e.g. brecan "to break" from Proto-Germanic *brekanaN but brecen "broken" from Proto-Germanic *brekanaz. Basically:
Note that the key difference is in steps 3 and 4, where nasalized aN is unaffected by a-fronting even though the sequence an is in fact affected, since it occurs in an unstressed syllable. This leads to a final-syllable difference between a and æ, which is transferred to the preceding syllable in step 4.
of velars occurred before, and sometimes after, front vowels. This occurred after a-restoration and before i-mutation
, but it is unclear whether it occurred before or after h-loss. Thus, it did not occur in galan "to sing" (cf. modern English "regale"), with the first /a/ backed from /æ/ due to a-restoration. Nor did it occur in cyning "king", with front /y/ developed from /u/ due to i-mutation.
The exact circumstances in which palatalization occurred are complicated; see the above section on the distribution of velars and palatals for more information.
) where the Mercian dialect was spoken. Mercian itself was a subdialect of the Anglian dialect (which includes all of Central and Northern England).
Examples:
A similar process produces eo in place of o or u, and ea in place of a, when following ċ, ġ, sċ:
It is generally agreed that the second process (affecting a, o, u) is purely an orthographic convention, i.e. the vowels continued to be pronounced a, o, u despite their spelling as diphthongs. Evidence from this comes from Middle and Modern English. For example, if ġeong and sċeolde were really pronounced as written, they should appear in Modern English as *yeng and *shield instead of young and should.
The traditional view of the first process (e.g. Campbell 1959, Mitchell and Robinson 2001) is that the vowels e/ē and æ/ǣ were actually diphthongized in this position.
A minority view (e.g. Lass 1994) is that this phenomenon is purely orthographic, and that no diphthongization took place. Under this view, the words listed above have the following pronunciations:
The main arguments in favor of this view are the fact that the corresponding process involving back vowels is indeed purely orthographic, and that diphthongizations like /æ/ → [æɑ] and /e/ → [iy] (if this is the correct interpretation of orthographic ie) are phonetically unmotivated in the context of a preceding palatal or postalveolar consonant.
It is disputed whether there is Middle English
evidence of the reality of this change in Old English.
, with the vowel and r switching places. This normally only occurred when the next following consonant was s or n, and sometimes d.
Not all potential words to which metathesis can apply are actually affected, and many of the above words also appear in their unmetathesized form (e.g. græs "grass", rinnan "to run", wrenna "wren", rare forms brustæn "burst (past part.)", þrescenne "to thresh", onbran "set fire to (past)", īsern "iron", ren- "house", þridda "third"; briddes "birds" in Chaucer). Note also that many of the words have come down to Modern English in their unmetathesized forms.
Metathesis in the other direction occasionally occurs before ht, e.g. wrohte "worked" (cf. obsolescent wrought; Gothic wurhta), Northumbrian breht ~ bryht "bright" (Gothic baírhts), fryhto "fright" (Gothic faúrhtei), wryhta "maker" (cf. wright; Old Saxon wurhtio). Unmetathesized forms of all of these words also occur in Old English. The phenomenon occurred in most Germanic languages.
This change preceded h-loss and vowel assimilation.
Note also that the diphthongs ie and īe did not exist in Anglian (or in fact in any dialect other than West Saxon).
of the preceding vowel if it is short. This occurs after breaking; hence breaking before /rh/ and /lh/ takes place regardless of whether the /h/ is lost by this rule. An unstressed
short vowel is absorbed into the preceding long vowel.
Examples:
(i.e. next to each other, with no consonant separating) collapsed into a single long vowel. Many occurrences were due to h-loss, but some came from other sources, e.g. loss of /j/ or /w/ after a front vowel. (Loss of /j/ occurred early, in Proto-Germanic times. Loss of /w/ occurred later, after i-umlaut.) If the first vowel was e or i (long or short), and the second vowel was a back vowel, a diphthong resulted. Examples:
) when a back vowel (u, o, ō, a) occurred in the following syllable. Examples:
Note that io turned into eo in late Old English.
A number of restrictions governed whether back mutation took place:
river. In the south, the easternmost portion was Kentish and everywhere else was West Saxon. Mercian and Northumbrian are often grouped together as "Anglian".
The biggest differences occurred between West Saxon and the other groups. The differences occurred mostly in the front vowels, and particularly the diphthongs. (However, Northumbrian was distinguished from the rest by much less palatalization
. Forms in Modern English with hard /k/ and /g/ were a palatalized sound would be expected from Old English are due either to Northumbrian influence or to direct borrowing from Scandinavian. Note that, in fact, the lack of palatalization in Northumbrian was probably due to heavy Scandinavian influence.)
The early history of Kentish was similar to Anglian, but sometime around the ninth century all of the front vowels æ, e, y (long and short) merged into e (long and short). The further discussion concerns the differences between Anglian and West Saxon, with the understanding that Kentish, other than where noted, can be derived from Anglian by front-vowel merger. The primary differences were:
As mentioned above, Modern English derives mostly from the Anglian dialect rather than the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English. However, since London
sits on the Thames near the boundary of the Anglian, West Saxon, and Kentish dialects, some West Saxon and Kentish forms have entered Modern English. For example, "bury" has its spelling derived from West Saxon and its pronunciation from Kentish (see below).
before /r/, throughout the history of English; vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before /h/; new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English w, g /ɣ/ > /w/, and ġ /j/; etc. The only conditional development considered in detail below is Middle English open-syllable lengthening. Note that, in the column on modern spelling, CV means a sequence of a single consonant followed by a vowel.
Note that the Modern English vowel usually spelled au (British /ɔː/, American /ɔ/) does not appear in the above chart. Its main source is late Middle English /au/, which come from various sources: Old English aw and ag ("claw" < clawu, "law" < lagu); diphthongization before /h/ ("sought" < sōhte, "taught" < tāhte, "daughter" < dohtor); borrowings from Latin and French ("fawn" < Old French
faune, "Paul" < Latin Paulus). Other sources are Early Modern English lengthening of /a/ before /l/ ("salt, all"); occasional shortening and later re-lengthening of Middle English /ɔː/ ("broad" < /brɔːd/ < brād); and in American English
, lengthening of short o before unvoiced fricatives and voiced velars ("dog, long, off, cross, moth", all with /ɔ/ in American English, at least in dialects that still maintain the difference between /a/ and /ɔ/).
As mentioned above, Modern English is derived from the Middle English of London, which is derived largely from Anglian Old English, with some admixture of West Saxon and Kentish. One of the most noticeable differences among the dialects is the handling of original Old English /y/. By the time of the written Old English documents, the Old English of Kent had already unrounded /y/ to /e/, and the late Old English of Anglia unrounded /y/ to /i/. In the West Saxon area, /y/ remained as such well into Middle English times, and was written u in Middle English documents from this area. Some words with this sound were borrowed into London Middle English, where the unfamiliar /y/ was substituted with /u/. Hence:
Note that some apparent instances of modern e for Old English y are actually regular developments, particularly where the y is a development of earlier (West Saxon) ie from i-mutation of ea, as the normal i-mutation of ea in Anglian is e; for example, "stern" < styrne < *starnijaz, "steel" < stȳle < *stahlijaN (cf. Old Saxon
stehli). Also, some apparent instances of modern u for Old English y may actually be due to the influence of a related form with unmutated u, e.g. "sundry" < syndriġ, influenced by sundor "apart, differently" (cf. "to sunder" and "asunder").
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved purely as a written language
Written language
A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus
Text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts...
of Old English, and the written language apparently indicates phonological alternation
Alternation (linguistics)
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
s quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.
Sound inventory
The inventory of surface sounds (whether allophoneAllophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s or phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s) of Old English is as shown below.
Consonants
| Labial Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | (ŋ) | ||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p b | t d | tʃ (dʒ) | k ɡ | |||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f (v) | θ (ð) | s (z) | ʃ | (ç) | (x) (ɣ) | h |
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
r | j | w | ||||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l |
1. The exact nature of Old English r is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant [ɹ], as in most Modern English accents, an alveolar flap [ɾ], or an alveolar trill
Alveolar trill
The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R...
[r]. In this article we will use the symbol /r/ indiscriminately to stand for this phoneme.
Consonant allophones
The sounds marked in parentheses in the table above are allophoneAllophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s: is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
-
- For example, senġan "to singe" is [sendʒɑn] <
- and bryċġ "bridge" is [bryddʒ] < /bryjj/ < < is an allophone of /n/ occurring before /k/ and /ɡ/
- For example, hring "ring" is [r̥iŋɡ]; [ŋ] did not occur alone word-finally in Old English as it does in Modern English. are allophones of /f, θ, s/ respectively, occurring between vowelVowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s or voiced consonants. - For example, stafas "letters" is [stɑvɑs] < /stɑfɑs/, smiþas "blacksmiths" is [smiðɑs] < /smiθɑs/, and hūses "house (genitive)" is [huːzes] < /huːses/. are allophones of /h/ occurring in codaSyllable codaIn phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
position after front and back vowels respectively. The evidence for the allophone [ç] after front vowels is indirect, as it is not indicated in the orthography. Nevertheless, the fact that there was historically a fronting of to /tʃ/ and of to /j/ after front vowels makes it very likely. Moreover, in late Middle EnglishMiddle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, /x/ sometimes became /f/ (e.g. tough, cough), but only after back vowels, never after front vowels. This is explained if we assume that the allophone [x] sometimes became [f] but the allophone [ç] never did. - For example, cniht "boy" is [kniçt], while ġeþōht "thought" is [jeˈθoːxt]
- The sequences /hw hl hn hr/ were realised as [w̥ l̥ n̥ r̥]. is an allophone of /ɡ/ occurring after a vowel or liquidLiquid consonantIn phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:...
. Historically, [ɣ] is older, and originally appeared in word-initial position as well; for Proto-GermanicProto-Germanic languageProto-Germanic , or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Germanic languages, such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.The Proto-Germanic language is...
(PGmc) and probably the earliest Old English it makes more sense to say that [ɡ] is an allophone of /ɣ/ after a nasalNasal consonantA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
. But after [ɣ] became [ɡ] word-initially, it makes more sense to treat the stopStop consonantIn phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
as the basic form and the fricativeFricative consonantFricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
as the allophonic variant.- For example, dagas "days" is [dɑɣɑs] and burgum "castles (dative)" is [burɣum] and /r/ apparently had velarized allophones [ɫ] and [ɹʷ], or similar, when followed by another consonant. This conclusion is based on the phenomena of breaking and retraction, which appear to be cases of assimilationAssimilation (linguistics)Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
to a following velar consonant.
- For example, dagas "days" is [dɑɣɑs] and burgum "castles (dative)" is [burɣum] and /r/ apparently had velarized allophones [ɫ] and [ɹʷ], or similar, when followed by another consonant. This conclusion is based on the phenomena of breaking and retraction, which appear to be cases of assimilation
Monophthongs
Most dialects of Old English had 7 vowelVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s, each with a short and long version, for a total of 14 monophthong
Monophthong
A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s. Certain dialects add an eighth vowel, for a total of 16.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i iː | y yː | u uː |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e eː | (ø øː) | o oː |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
æ æː | ɑ ɑː | |
The front
Front vowel
A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
mid
Mid vowel
A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...
rounded vowels /ø(ː)/ occur in some dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of Old English, but not in the best attested Late West Saxon dialect. This latter dialect also contained the monophthongization of the ie/īe diphthong to i known as an unstable i (note variant spellings of geliefan and gelifan). The unstable i was then rounded to a y (gelyfan), the only exceptions being those in a proximity to c, g and h (thus is the case with forms like gifan from Early West Saxon giefan). This sound change of the ie diphthong developed alongside the other y resulting from i-mutation. There is also historical evidence suggesting that short /e/ and /o/ were phonetically lower and/or more centralized (perhaps [ɛ] and [ɔ]) than the corresponding long ones.
Diphthongs
Old English in the late West Saxon dialect had three diphthongDiphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s, each with short and long
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
versions, for a total of 6.
| Short (monomoraic Mora (linguistics) Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D... ) |
Long (bimoraic) |
|
|---|---|---|
| First element is close | iy | iːy |
| Both elements are mid | eo | eːo |
| Both elements are open | æɑ | æːɑ |
2. It is uncertain whether the diphthongs spelt ie/īe were pronounced [i(ː)y] or [i(ː)e]. The fact that this diphthong was merged with /y(ː)/ in many dialects suggests the former.
Distribution of velars and palatals
The pairs /k/~/tʃ/ and /ɡ/~/j/ are almost certainly distinct phonemes synchronically in late West Saxon, the dialect in which the majority of Old English documents are written. This is suggested by such near-minimal pairMinimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
s as:
- drincan [driŋkɑn] "to drink" vs. drenċan [drentʃɑn] "to drench"
- gēs [ɡeːs] "geese" vs. ġē [jeː] "you"
Nevertheless there are very few environments in which both the velars and the palatals can occur; in most environments only one or the other set occurs. Also, the two sets alternate with each other in ways reminiscent of allophones, for example:
- ċēosan [tʃeːozan] "to choose" vs. curon [kuron] "chose (pl.)"
- ġēotan [jeːotan] "to pour" vs. guton [ɡuton] "poured (pl.)"
(In the standardized orthography used on this page, c stands for /k/, ċ for /tʃ/, g for /ɡ/ and [ɣ], and ġ for /j/ and [dʒ]. The geminates of these are spelled cc, ċċ, cg, ċġ.)
The best way to explain the distribution of c~ċ and g~ġ is through historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
. The PGmc ancestor of both c and ċ is ; the ancestor of both g and ġ is . Palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of to ċ and of to ġ happened in the following environments:
- before PGmc nonlow front vowels as well as PGmc
- Examples: ġifþ "(he) gives" < , ċīdan "to chide" < , ċeorl "churl" < , ċēoce "cheek" < ; non-initially bēċ "books" < , sēċan "seek" < , bryċġ "bridge" <
- before OE /æ, æː/ < PGmc (but not before OE /ɑ, ɑː/ < PGmc by a-restoration)
- Examples: ġeaf /jæf/ "gave" <
- before OE /æːɑ/ < PGmc
- Examples: ċēas "chose (sg.)" < , ġēat "poured (sg.)" < , ċēace /tʃæːke/ "cheek" <
- before OE /æɑ/ < PGmc by breaking
- Examples: ċeald "cold" < , ġeard "yard" <
- after OE /i, iː/, unless a back vowel followed
- Examples: iċ "I" < PGmc , dīċ "ditch, dike" < PGmc (but wicu "weak")
- after OE /e, eː/ and /æ, æː/ ( only!), unless a back vowel followed
- Examples: weġ "way" < PGmc , næġl "nail" < PGmc , mǣġ "relative" < PGmc (but wegas "ways")
The velars remained velar, however, before back vowels that underwent i-mutation (umlaut):
- cyning "king" <
- gēs "geese" < <
- cemban "to comb" <
Palatalization was undone before consonants in OE:
- sēcþ "he seeks" < *sēċþ <
- sengþ "he singes" < *senġþ <
The palatalization of PGmc to OE /ʃ/ (spelt sċ) is much less restricted: word-initially it is found before back vowels and r as well as in the environments where ċ and ġ are found.
- sċuldor "shoulder" <
- sċort "short" <
- sċrūd (mod. "shroud") "dress" <
Non-initially palatalization to sċ is found before PGmc front vowels and j, and after front vowels in OE, but not before an OE back vowel
- fisċ "fish" <
- āscian "ask" <
In addition to /j/ from the palatalization of PGmc , Old English also has /j/ from PGmc , which could stand before back vowels:
- ġeong /junɡ/ "young" < PGmc
- ġeoc /jok/ "yoke" < PGmc
Many instances where a ċ/c, ġ/g, or sċ/sc alternation would be expected within a paradigm, it was levelled out by analogy
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
at some point in the history of the language. For example, the velar of sēcþ "he seeks" has replaced the palatal of sēċan "to seek" in Modern English; on the other hand, the palatalised forms of besēċan have replaced the velar forms, giving modern beseech.
Phonological processes
A number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. These processes especially affected vowels, and are the reason why many Old English words look significantly different from related words in languages such as Old High GermanOld High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
, which is much closer to the common West Germanic ancestor of both languages. The processes took place chronologically in the order described below (with uncertainty in ordering as noted).
Various conventions are used below for describing Old English words, reconstructed parent forms of various sorts, and reconstructed Proto-West-Germanic (PWG), Proto-Germanic (PG) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) forms:
- Forms in italic denote either Old English words as they appear in spelling, or reconstructed forms of various sorts. Where phonemic ambiguity occurs in Old English spelling, extra diacritics are used (ċ, ġ, ā, ǣ, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ).
- Forms between /slashes/ or [brackets] indicate, respectively, broad (phonemic) or narrow (allophonic) pronunciation. Sounds are indicated using standard IPAInternational Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
notation. - Long vowels appear as e.g. ō but /oː/.
- Nasal vowels appear as e.g. oN but /õ/.
- Overlong vowels appear as e.g. ô but /oːː/.
- Nasal overlong vowels appear as e.g. ôN but /õːː/.
- "Long" diphthongs appear as e.g. ēa but /æa/.
- "Short" diphthongs appear as e.g. ea but /æ̆ă/, [æ̆ɑ̆].
- Velar /k/ appears c in old English spelling and sometimes in reconstructed intermediate forms, but k elsewhere.
A-fronting ("Anglo-Frisian brightening"), part 1
The Anglo-Frisian languagesAnglo-Frisian languages
The Anglo-Frisian languages form a group of West Germanic languages consisting of Old English, Old Frisian, and their descendants...
underwent a sound change in their development from Proto-West Germanic by which ā [ɑː], unless followed by /n, m/ or nasalized, was fronted to ǣ [æː]. This is part of a process known in the literature as Anglo-Frisian brightening. Note that nasalized āN was unaffected, and was later raised to ōN (see below). Similarly, the sequences ān, ām were unaffected and later raised to ōn, ōm. (It can be assumed, therefore, that a nasal consonant n, m caused a preceding long vowel to nasalize.)
Monophthongization of /ai/
Proto-Germanic /ai/ was monophthongized to /aː/ ([ɑː]). This occurred after the fronting of West Germanic [ɑː] to [æː] by Anglo-Frisian brightening. Examples are numerous, e.g. stān "stone" ← Proto-Germanic *stainaz (cf. Old Frisian stēn vs. GothicGothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
stáin, Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
stein). In many cases the resulting [ɑː] was later fronted to [æː] by i-mutation
I-mutation
I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
, e.g. dǣlan "to divide" (cf. Old Frisian dēla vs. Gothic dáiljan, Old High German teilen).
A-fronting ("Anglo-Frisian brightening"), part 2
Part two of a-fronting (or "Anglo-Frisian brightening") is very similar to part one except that it affects short a [ɑ] instead of long ā [ɑː]. a [ɑ] is fronted to æ [æ] unless followed by /n, m/ or nasalized — the same conditions as applied in part one.See a-restoration below for examples.
Importantly, a-fronting was blocked by n, m only in stressed syllables, not unstressed syllables. This accounts for forms like ġefen (archaic ġefæn) "given" from Proto-Germanic *gebanaz. However, the infinitive ġefan retains its back vowel because it was followed by a nasal vowel in Proto-Germanic, which blocked the fronting: *gebanaN. This provides evidence that the fronting occurred before the loss of final -aN, which occurred before the earliest written records of any West Germanic language.
Diphthong height harmonization
DiphthongDiphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s in most languages are of the "closing" type, where the second segment is higher (if possible) than the first, e.g. Modern English /ai, au, oi, ei, ou/. Proto-Germanic likewise had /ai, au, eu/ and [iu] ([iu] was an allophone of /eu/ when an /i/ or /j/ followed in the next syllable). Old English, however, had unusual "harmonic" diphthongs, where both segments were of the same height: ea /æɑ/, eo, /eo/, io /iu/, ie /iy/. Note that all of these diphthongs could occur both
short (monomoraic
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
), i.e. /æ̆ă, ĕŏ, ĭŭ, ĭy̆/, and long (bimoraic), i.e. /æa, eo, iu, iy/. Note also that the spelling of the diphthongs differs somewhat from their assumed pronunciation. The interpretations ea /æa/ and eo /eo/ are generally accepted (evidence for the former comes from various sources, e.g. the behavior of breaking and back mutation [see below]) and the Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
development of ea into the short low-central vowel /a/). However, the interpretations io /iu/ and especially ie /iy/ are controversial, with many (especially more traditional) sources assuming that the pronunciation matched the spelling, i.e. io /io/ and ie /ie/ — that is, these diphthongs were of the "opening" rather than harmonic type.
The process that produced harmonic diphthongs from earlier closing diphthongs is called diphthong height harmonization. Specifically, the second segment of a diphthong was changed to be the same height as the first segment. Proto-Germanic diphthongs were affected as follows:
- /ai/ [ɑi] had earlier been monophthongized to /aː/ ([ɑː]).
- /au/ [ɑu] was fronted by a-fronting (aka Anglo-Frisian brightening) to /æu/, and then harmonized to /æɑ/, spelled ea
- /eu/ [eu] was harmonized to eo /eo/ was already harmonic; it became phonemic, and remained as io /iu/ (this interpretation is somewhat controversial; see above)
Note that the remaining Old English diphthongs were due to other processes, such as breaking, back mutation and i-mutation
I-mutation
I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
.
Late in the development of the standard West Saxon dialect, io (both long and short) became eo, merging with existing eo. This is in fact one of the most noticeable differences between early Old English (c. 900 AD) and late Old English (c. 1000 AD).
Breaking and retraction
BreakingBreaking (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. The change into a diphthong is also known as diphthongization...
in Old English is the diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
ization of the short front vowels /i, e, æ/ to short (monomoraic
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
) /ĭŭ, ĕŏ, æ̆ɑ̆/ when followed by /h/ or by /r/ or /l/ plus another consonant. Long ī, ǣ similarly broke to iu, ea, but only when followed by /h/. Note that /l/ in coda position has a velar quality (the "dark l" allomorph on present-day English all, cold), and is therefore indicated as [ɫ]. The geminates rr and ll usually count as r or l plus another consonant, although ll produced by West Germanic gemination
West Germanic Gemination
West Germanic gemination is a sound change that took place in all West Germanic languages, around 300 AD. All single consonants except were geminated before . The second element of the diphthongs iu and au was still underlyingly at this time and therefore was still considered a consonant, so...
doesn't count. (More correctly, /i/ or /j/ in the following syllable prevents breaking from occurring.)
Note that /ĭŭ, iu/ were lowered to /ĕŏ, eo/ in late Old English (see above).
The exact conditions for breaking vary somewhat depending on the sound being broken:
- Short /æ/ breaks before h, rC, lC, where C is any consonant.
- Short /e/ breaks before h, rC, lh, lc, w, i.e. compared to /æ/ it's also broken before w, but is broken before l only in the combination lh and sometimes lc.
- Short /i/ breaks before h, rC, w. However, breaking before wi does not happen, and in the Anglian dialect breaking before rCi happens only in the combination *rzi (e.g. Anglian iorre "anger" from *irzijaN but afirran from *a+firrijanaN).
- Long ī and ǣ break only before h.
Examples:
- weorpan [wĕŏrpɑn] "to throw" < */werpan/
- wearp [wæ̆ɑ̆rp] "threw (sing.)" < */wærp/
- feoh [fĕŏx] "money" < */feh/
- feaht [fæ̆ăxt] "fought (sing.)" < */fæht/
- healp [hæ̆ăɫp] "helped (sing.)" < */hælp/ (but no breaking in helpan "to help" because the consonant after /l/ is not /h/)
- feorr [fĕŏrr] "far" < */ferr/
- feallan [fæ̆ɑ̆llɑn] "to fall" < */fællan/ (but tellan < earlier */tælljan/ is not broken because of the following /j/)
- eolh [ĕŏɫx] "elk" < */elh/
- liornian, leornian [lĭŭrniɑn], [lĕŏrniɑn] "to learn" < earlier */lirnoːjan/
- nēah "near" [næːɑx] (cf. "nigh") < */næːh/
- lēon "to lend" [leon] (cf. "nigh") < */liun/ < */liuhan/ < */liːhan/
The i-mutation of broken /iu, eo, æa/ (whether long or short) is spelled ie (possibly /iy/, see above).
Examples:
- hwierfþ "turns" (intr.Intransitive verbIn grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
) < /hwĭŭrfiθ/ + i-mutation < /hwirfiθ/ + breaking < Proto-Germanic < early Proto-Germanic - hwierfan "to turn" (tr.Transitive verbIn syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
) < /hwæ̆ărfijan/ + i-mutation < /hwærfijan/ + breaking < /hwarfijan/ + a-fronting < Proto-Germanic - nīehst "nearest" (cf. "next") < /næahist/ + i-mutation < /næːhist/ + breaking < /naːhist/ + a-fronting < Proto-Germanic
- līehtan "to lighten" < /liuhtijan/ + i-mutation < /liːhtijan/ + breaking < Proto-Germanic
Note that in some dialects /æ/ was backed (retracted) to /a/ (/ɑ/) rather than broken, when occurring in the circumstances described above that would normally trigger breaking. This happened in the dialect of Anglia that partially underlies Modern English, and explains why Old English ceald appears as Modern English "cold" (actually from Anglian Old English cald) rather than "*cheald" (the expected result of ceald).
Both breaking and retraction are fundamentally phenomena of assimilation
Assimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
to a following velar consonant. Note that /w/ is in fact a velar consonant, while /h/, /l/, and /r/ are less obviously so. It is therefore assumed that, at least at the time of the occurrence of breaking and retraction, /h/ was pronounced [x] or similar — at least when following a vowel — and /l/ and /r/ before a consonant had a velar or retroflex quality and were pronounced [ɫ] and [ɹ], or similar. Breaking and retraction occurred several hundred years before recorded Old English. However, based on evidence from Middle and Modern English, it is assumed that /l/ and /r/ maintained the same velar/retroflex allophones in the same contexts into recorded Old English. As for /h/, the later changes of h-loss and palatalization indicate that some changes occurred in the allophones of /h/; see above.
A-restoration
After breaking occurred, short /æ/ (and in some dialects long /æː/ as well), was backed to /a/ (/ɑ/) when there was a back vowelBack vowel
A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
in the following syllable. This is called "a-restoration" because it partly restored original /a/, which had earlier been fronted to /æ/ (see above). (Note: The situation is complicated by a later change in some dialects called "Second Fronting" that fronted short restored /a/ to /æ/ for the second time, while raising /æ/ to /e/. This did not affect the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English.)
Because strong masculine and neuter nouns have back vowels in the plural, alternations like /æ/ in the singular vs. /a/ in the plural are common in this noun class:
| /æ/~/a/ alternation in masculine and neuter strong nouns | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case | Masculine | Neuter | ||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | dæġ | dagas | fæt | fatu |
| Accusative | dæġ | dagas | fæt | fatu |
| Genitive | dæġes | daga | fætes | fata |
| Dative | dæġe | dagum | fæte | fatum |
A-restoration occurred before the *ō of the weak verb suffix *-ōj-, although this surfaces in Old English as the front vowel i, as in "to make" < *makōjan-.
Breaking (see above) occurred between a-fronting and a-restoration. This order is necessary to account for words like slēan "to slay" (actually pronounced /slæɑn/) from original *slahan: /slahan/ > /slæhan/ (a-fronting) > /slæ̆ɑ̆hɑn/ (breaking; inhibits a-restoration) > /slæ̆ɑ̆ɑn/ (h-loss) > /slæɑn/ (vowel coalescence, compensatory lengthening).
A-restoration interacted in a tricky fashion with a-fronting (Anglo-Frisian brightening) to produce e.g. brecan "to break" from Proto-Germanic *brekanaN but brecen "broken" from Proto-Germanic *brekanaz. Basically:
| Step | "to break" | "broken" | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | /brekanaN/ | /brekanaz/ | original form |
| 2 | /brekanaN/ | /brekana/ | loss of final z |
| 3 | /brekænaN/ | /brekænæ/ | Anglo-Frisian brightening |
| 4 | /brekanaN/ | /brekænæ/ | a-restoration |
| 5 | /brekan/ | /brekæn/ | loss of final short vowels |
| 6 | /brekan/ | /breken/ | collapse of unstressed short front vowels to /e/ |
| 7 | brecan | brecen | spelled normally |
Note that the key difference is in steps 3 and 4, where nasalized aN is unaffected by a-fronting even though the sequence an is in fact affected, since it occurs in an unstressed syllable. This leads to a final-syllable difference between a and æ, which is transferred to the preceding syllable in step 4.
Palatalization
PalatalizationPalatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of velars occurred before, and sometimes after, front vowels. This occurred after a-restoration and before i-mutation
I-mutation
I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
, but it is unclear whether it occurred before or after h-loss. Thus, it did not occur in galan "to sing" (cf. modern English "regale"), with the first /a/ backed from /æ/ due to a-restoration. Nor did it occur in cyning "king", with front /y/ developed from /u/ due to i-mutation.
The exact circumstances in which palatalization occurred are complicated; see the above section on the distribution of velars and palatals for more information.
Second fronting
Second fronting fronted /a/ to /æ/, and /æ/ to /e/, later than related processes of a-fronting and a-restoration. Second fronting did not affect the standard West Saxon dialect. In fact, it took place only in a relatively small section of the area (English MidlandsEnglish Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
) where the Mercian dialect was spoken. Mercian itself was a subdialect of the Anglian dialect (which includes all of Central and Northern England).
Palatal diphthongization
The vowels ie/īe and ea/ēa generally occur in Old English after ċ, ġ, sċ where the vowels e/ē and æ/ǣ would be expected.Examples:
- sċieran "to cut", sċear "cut (past sing.)", sċēaron "cut (past pl.)", which belongs to the same conjugation class (IV) as beran "to carry", bær "carried (sing.)", bǣron "carried (pl.)"
- ġiefan "to give", ġeaf "gave (sing.)", ġēafon "gave (pl.)", ġiefen "given", which belongs to the same conjugation class (V) as tredan "to tread", træd "trod (sing.)", trǣdon "trod (pl.)", treden "trodden"
A similar process produces eo in place of o or u, and ea in place of a, when following ċ, ġ, sċ:
- *ġung > ġeong "young" (cf. GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
jung) - *sċolde > sċeolde "should" (cf. German sollte)
- *sċadu > *sċeadu "shadow" (cf. DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
schaduw)
It is generally agreed that the second process (affecting a, o, u) is purely an orthographic convention, i.e. the vowels continued to be pronounced a, o, u despite their spelling as diphthongs. Evidence from this comes from Middle and Modern English. For example, if ġeong and sċeolde were really pronounced as written, they should appear in Modern English as *yeng and *shield instead of young and should.
The traditional view of the first process (e.g. Campbell 1959, Mitchell and Robinson 2001) is that the vowels e/ē and æ/ǣ were actually diphthongized in this position.
A minority view (e.g. Lass 1994) is that this phenomenon is purely orthographic, and that no diphthongization took place. Under this view, the words listed above have the following pronunciations:
- sċieran [ʃerɑn]
- sċear [ʃær]
- sċēaron [ʃæːron]
- ġiefan [jevɑn]
- ġeaf [jæf]
- ġēafon [jæːvon]
- ġiefen [jeven]
The main arguments in favor of this view are the fact that the corresponding process involving back vowels is indeed purely orthographic, and that diphthongizations like /æ/ → [æɑ] and /e/ → [iy] (if this is the correct interpretation of orthographic ie) are phonetically unmotivated in the context of a preceding palatal or postalveolar consonant.
It is disputed whether there is Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
evidence of the reality of this change in Old English.
Metathesis of r
Original sequences of an r followed by a short vowel metathesizedMetathesis (linguistics)
Metathesis is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more contiguous sounds, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis:...
, with the vowel and r switching places. This normally only occurred when the next following consonant was s or n, and sometimes d.
- Before s: berstan "to burst" (Swedish brista), gærs "grass" (Gothic gras), þerscan "to thresh"(Gothic þriskan)
- Before n: byrnan ~ beornan "to burn (intrans)" (Gothic brinnan), irnan "to run" (Gothic rinnan), īren "iron" (< *īsren < īsern; Gothic eisarn), wærna "wren" (Icelandic rindill), ærn "house" (Gothic razn)
- Before d: þirda "third" (Gothic þridja), Northumbrian bird "chick, nestling" (standard bryd)
Not all potential words to which metathesis can apply are actually affected, and many of the above words also appear in their unmetathesized form (e.g. græs "grass", rinnan "to run", wrenna "wren", rare forms brustæn "burst (past part.)", þrescenne "to thresh", onbran "set fire to (past)", īsern "iron", ren- "house", þridda "third"; briddes "birds" in Chaucer). Note also that many of the words have come down to Modern English in their unmetathesized forms.
Metathesis in the other direction occasionally occurs before ht, e.g. wrohte "worked" (cf. obsolescent wrought; Gothic wurhta), Northumbrian breht ~ bryht "bright" (Gothic baírhts), fryhto "fright" (Gothic faúrhtei), wryhta "maker" (cf. wright; Old Saxon wurhtio). Unmetathesized forms of all of these words also occur in Old English. The phenomenon occurred in most Germanic languages.
I-mutation (i-umlaut)
See i-mutation in Old English.Anglian smoothing
In the Anglian (i.e. Mercian and Northumbrian) dialects of Old English, a process called smoothing undid many of the effects of breaking. In particular, before a velar (/h/, /g/, /k/) or before an /r/ or /l/ followed by a velar, diphthongs were reduced to monophthongs. Note that the context for smoothing is similar to the context for the earlier process of breaking that produced many of the diphthongs in the first place. In particular:- ea > æ before a velar, e before /r/ or /l/ + velar
- ēa > ē
- eo > e
- ēo > ē
- io > i
- īo > ī
This change preceded h-loss and vowel assimilation.
Note also that the diphthongs ie and īe did not exist in Anglian (or in fact in any dialect other than West Saxon).
H-loss
In the same contexts where the voiceless fricatives /f, θ, s/ become voiced, i.e. between vowels and between a voiced consonant and a vowel, /h/ is lost, with compensatory lengtheningCompensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda...
of the preceding vowel if it is short. This occurs after breaking; hence breaking before /rh/ and /lh/ takes place regardless of whether the /h/ is lost by this rule. An unstressed
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
short vowel is absorbed into the preceding long vowel.
Examples:
- sċōs "shoe" (gen.) < /ʃoːes/ < /ʃoːhes/, cf. sċōh (nom.)
- fēos "money" (gen.) < /feoes/ < /fĕŏhes/ < /fehes/, cf. feoh (nom.)
- wēalas "foreigners, Welsh people" < /wæ̆ălhas/ < /wælhas/, cf. wealh (sing.)
Vowel assimilation
Two vowels that occurred in hiatusHiatus (linguistics)
In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
(i.e. next to each other, with no consonant separating) collapsed into a single long vowel. Many occurrences were due to h-loss, but some came from other sources, e.g. loss of /j/ or /w/ after a front vowel. (Loss of /j/ occurred early, in Proto-Germanic times. Loss of /w/ occurred later, after i-umlaut.) If the first vowel was e or i (long or short), and the second vowel was a back vowel, a diphthong resulted. Examples:
- sċōs "shoe" (gen.) < Proto-Germanic *skōhas (see under h-loss)
- fēos "money" (gen.) < Proto-Germanic *fehas (see under h-loss)
- frēond "friend" < frīond < Proto-Germanic *frijōndz (two syllables, cf. GothicGothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
frijōnds) - sǣm "sea" (dat. pl.) < sǣum < *sǣwum < *sǣwimiz < Proto-Germanic *saiwimiz
Back mutation
Back mutation (sometimes back umlaut, guttural umlaut or u-umlaut) is a change that took place in late prehistoric Old English and caused short e, i and sometimes a to break into a diphthong (eo, io, ea respectively, similar to breakingBreaking (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. The change into a diphthong is also known as diphthongization...
) when a back vowel (u, o, ō, a) occurred in the following syllable. Examples:
- seofon "seven" < *sebun (cf. GothicGothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
sibun) - heol(o)stor "hiding place, cover" < earlier helustr < *hulestr < *hulistran (cf. Gothic hulistr)
- eofor "boar" < *eburaz (cf. Old High GermanOld High GermanThe term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
ebur) - heorot "hart" < *herutaz (cf. Old High German hiruz)
- mioluc, meoluc "milk" < *melukz (cf. Gothic miluks)
- liofast, leofast "you (sg.) live" < *libast
- ealu "ale" < *aluþ
Note that io turned into eo in late Old English.
A number of restrictions governed whether back mutation took place:
- Generally it only took place when a single consonant followed the vowel being broken.
- In the standard West Saxon dialect, back mutation only took place before labials (f, b, w) and liquids (l, r). In the Anglian dialect, it took place before all consonants except c, g (Anglian meodu "mead", eosol "donkey" vs. West Saxon medu, esol). In the Kentish dialect, it took place before all consonants (Kentish breogo "price" vs. West Saxon, Anglian bregu, brego).
- Back mutation of a normally took place only in the Mercian subdialect of the Anglian dialect. Standard ealu "ale" is a borrowing from Mercian. Similar borrowings are poetic beadu "battle" and eafora "son, heir", cf. GothicGothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
afar (many poetic words were borrowed from Mercian). On the other hand, standard bealu "evil" (arch. bale) and bearu "grove" owe their ea due to breaking — their forms at the time of breaking were *balwaN, *barwaz, and the genitive singulars in Old English are bealwes, bearwes.
Palatal umlaut
Palatal umlaut is a process whereby short e, eo, io appear as i (occasionally ie) before final ht, hs, hþ. Examples:- riht "right" (cf. GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
recht) - cniht "boy" (mod. knight) (cf. GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Knecht) - siex "six" (cf. GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
sechs) - briht, bryht "bright" (cf. non-metathesized Old English forms beorht, (Anglian) berht, DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
brecht) - hlihþ "(he) laughs" < *hlehþ < *hlæhiþ + i-mutation < Proto-Germanic *hlahiþ (cf. hliehhan "to laugh" < Proto-Germanic *hlahjanaN)
Dialects
As noted in the main page on Old English, there were four major dialect groups in Old English: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian, and Kentish. West Saxon and Kentish occurred in the south, approximately to the south of the Thames river. Mercian constituted the middle section of the country, divided from the southern dialects by the Thames and from Northumbrian by the HumberHumber
The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal River Ouse and the tidal River Trent. From here to the North Sea, it forms part of the boundary between the East Riding of Yorkshire on the north bank...
river. In the south, the easternmost portion was Kentish and everywhere else was West Saxon. Mercian and Northumbrian are often grouped together as "Anglian".
The biggest differences occurred between West Saxon and the other groups. The differences occurred mostly in the front vowels, and particularly the diphthongs. (However, Northumbrian was distinguished from the rest by much less palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
. Forms in Modern English with hard /k/ and /g/ were a palatalized sound would be expected from Old English are due either to Northumbrian influence or to direct borrowing from Scandinavian. Note that, in fact, the lack of palatalization in Northumbrian was probably due to heavy Scandinavian influence.)
The early history of Kentish was similar to Anglian, but sometime around the ninth century all of the front vowels æ, e, y (long and short) merged into e (long and short). The further discussion concerns the differences between Anglian and West Saxon, with the understanding that Kentish, other than where noted, can be derived from Anglian by front-vowel merger. The primary differences were:
- Original (post Anglo-Frisian brightening) ǣ was raised to ē in Anglian but remained in West Saxon. This occurred before other changes such as breaking, and did not affect ǣ caused by i-umlaut of ā. Hence, e.g., dǣlan "to divide" < *dailijan appears the same in both dialects, but West Saxon slǣpan "to sleep" appears as slēpan in Anglian. (Note the corresponding vowel difference in the spelling of "deal" < dǣlan vs. "sleep" < Anglian slēpan.)
- The West Saxon vowels ie/īe, caused by i-umlaut of long and short ea,eo,io, did not appear in Anglian. Instead, i-umlaut of ea and rare eo is spelled e, and i-umlaut of io remains as io.
- Breaking of short /æ/ to ea did not happen in Anglian before /l/+consonant; instead, the vowel was retracted to /a/. When mutated by i-umlaut, it appears again as æ (vs. West Saxon ie). Hence, Anglian cald "cold" vs. West Saxon ċeald.
- Merger of eo and io (long and short) occurred early in West Saxon, but much later in Anglian.
- Many instances of diphthongs in Anglian, including the majority of cases caused by breaking, were turned back into monophthongs again by the process of "Anglian smoothing", which occurred before c,h,g, alone or preceded by r or l. This accounts for some of the most noticeable differences between standard (i.e. West Saxon) Old English and Modern English spelling. E.g. ēage "eye" became ēge in Anglian; nēah "near" became Anglian nēh, later raised to nīh in the transition to Middle English by raising of ē before h (hence "nigh" in Modern English); nēahst "nearest" become Anglian nēhst, shortened to nehst in late Old English by vowel-shortening before three consonants (hence "next" in Modern English).
As mentioned above, Modern English derives mostly from the Anglian dialect rather than the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English. However, since London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
sits on the Thames near the boundary of the Anglian, West Saxon, and Kentish dialects, some West Saxon and Kentish forms have entered Modern English. For example, "bury" has its spelling derived from West Saxon and its pronunciation from Kentish (see below).
Changes leading up to Middle and Modern English
For a detailed description of the changes between Old English and Middle/Modern English, see the article on the phonological history of English. A summary of the main vowel changes is presented below. Note that the spelling of Modern English largely reflects Middle English pronunciation. Note also that this table presents only the general developments. Many exceptional outcomes occurred in particular environments, e.g. vowels were often lengthened in late Old English before /ld/, /nd/, /mb/; vowels changed in complex waysPhonological history of English vowels
In the history of English phonology, there were many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers.-Great Vowel Shift and Trisyllabic laxing:...
before /r/, throughout the history of English; vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before /h/; new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English w, g /ɣ/ > /w/, and ġ /j/; etc. The only conditional development considered in detail below is Middle English open-syllable lengthening. Note that, in the column on modern spelling, CV means a sequence of a single consonant followed by a vowel.
Note that the Modern English vowel usually spelled au (British /ɔː/, American /ɔ/) does not appear in the above chart. Its main source is late Middle English /au/, which come from various sources: Old English aw and ag ("claw" < clawu, "law" < lagu); diphthongization before /h/ ("sought" < sōhte, "taught" < tāhte, "daughter" < dohtor); borrowings from Latin and French ("fawn" < Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
faune, "Paul" < Latin Paulus). Other sources are Early Modern English lengthening of /a/ before /l/ ("salt, all"); occasional shortening and later re-lengthening of Middle English /ɔː/ ("broad" < /brɔːd/ < brād); and in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, lengthening of short o before unvoiced fricatives and voiced velars ("dog, long, off, cross, moth", all with /ɔ/ in American English, at least in dialects that still maintain the difference between /a/ and /ɔ/).
As mentioned above, Modern English is derived from the Middle English of London, which is derived largely from Anglian Old English, with some admixture of West Saxon and Kentish. One of the most noticeable differences among the dialects is the handling of original Old English /y/. By the time of the written Old English documents, the Old English of Kent had already unrounded /y/ to /e/, and the late Old English of Anglia unrounded /y/ to /i/. In the West Saxon area, /y/ remained as such well into Middle English times, and was written u in Middle English documents from this area. Some words with this sound were borrowed into London Middle English, where the unfamiliar /y/ was substituted with /u/. Hence:
- "gild" < gyldan, "did" < dyde, "sin" < synn, "mind" < mynd, "dizzy" < dysiġ "foolish", "lift" < lyft "air", etc. show the normal (Anglian) development.
- "much" < myċel shows the West Saxon development.
- "merry" < myriġ shows the Kentish development.
- "build" < byldan and "busy" < bysiġ have their spelling from West Saxon but pronunciation from Anglian.
- "bury" /bɛri/ < byrġan has its spelling from West Saxon but its pronunciation from Kentish.
Note that some apparent instances of modern e for Old English y are actually regular developments, particularly where the y is a development of earlier (West Saxon) ie from i-mutation of ea, as the normal i-mutation of ea in Anglian is e; for example, "stern" < styrne < *starnijaz, "steel" < stȳle < *stahlijaN (cf. Old Saxon
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
stehli). Also, some apparent instances of modern u for Old English y may actually be due to the influence of a related form with unmutated u, e.g. "sundry" < syndriġ, influenced by sundor "apart, differently" (cf. "to sunder" and "asunder").