EVOLUTION OF THE SOUND SYSTEM
Тема лекції: Значні історичні події новоанглійського періоду. Фонетична будова.
ЗМІСТ ЛЕКЦІЇ
1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE EARLY NE PERIOD
- Economic and political unification. Conditions for linguistic unity.
- Introduction of Printing.
- Expansion of English over the British Isles.
- Flourishing of Literature in Early NE. (Literary. Renaissance)
- Establishment of the Written Standard.
As early as the 13th c. new economic relations began to take shape. The crafts became separated from agriculture, and new social groups came into being: poor town artisans, the town middle class, rich merchants, owners of workshops and money-lenders.
The 15th and 16th c. saw striking changes in the life of the country. Trade had extended beyond the local boundaries and in addition to farming and cattle-breeding, an important wool industry was carried on in the countryside. Britain began to export woolen cloth produced by the first big enterprises, the “manufactures”. The landowners evicted the peasants and enclosed their land with ditches and fences, turning it into vast pastures. Thomas More wrote in the early 16th c. his famous “Utopia” that sheep had “become so great devourers and so wild that they eat up, and swallow down the very men themselves”.
The changes in the economic and social conditions led to the intermixture of people coming from different regions and to the strengthening of social ties between the various parts of the country.
Economic and social changes were accompanied by political unification. In the last quarter of the 15th c. England became a centralized state.
At the end of the Hundred Years’ War life in Britain became more turbulent than ever. Continued anarchy and violence broke out into a civil war known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485). The thirty-year contest for the possession of the crown ended in the establishment of a strong royal power under Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty. The next step in the creation of an absolute monarchy was to break the monopoly of the medieval Papacy. This was achieved by his successor, Henry VIII (1509-1547), who quarreled with the Pope, declared himself head of the English Church and dissolved the monasteries (the English Reformation, 1529-1536). Now the victory of the Crown was complete.
The economic and political unification played a decisive role in the development of the English language.
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The 15th and 16th c. in Western Europe are marked by a renewed interest in classical art and literature and by a general efflorescence of culture. The rise of a new vigorous social class – the bourgeoisie – proved an enormous stimulus to the progress of learning, science, literature and art.
The universities at Oxford and Cambridge (founded in the 12th c.) became the centers of new humanistic learning. Henry VIII assembled at his court a group of brilliant scholars and artists. Education had ceased to be the privilege of the clergy; it spread to laymen and people of lower social ranks. After the Reformation teachers and tutors could be laymen as well as clergymen.
As before, the main subject in schools was Latin; the English language was labelled as “a rude and barren tongue”, fit only to serve as an instrument in teaching Latin. Scientific and philosophical treaties were written in Latin, which was not only the language of the church but also the language of philosophy and science. The influence of classical languages on English grew and was reflected in the enrichment of the vocabulary.
Of all the outstanding achievements of this great age, the invention of printing had the most immediate effect on the development of the language, its written form in particular. “Artificial writing” as printing was then called, was invented in Germany in 1438 (by Johann Gutenberg). The first printer of English books was William Caxton (1422 – 1491).
The first English book printed in 1475 was Caxton’s translation of the story of Troy. All in all about one hundred books were issued by his press and about a score of them were either translated or edited by Caxton himself. Among the earliest publications were the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer.
It is difficult to overestimate the influence of the first printers in fixing and spreading the written form of English. The language they used was the London literary English established since the age of Chaucer. With cheap printed books becoming available to a greater number of readers, the London form of speech was carried to other regions and was imitated in the written works produced all over England.
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The greatest influence exerted by the printers was that on the written form of the word. The written forms of many words perpetuated by the Caxton were accepted as standard and have often remained unchanged to the present day in spite of the drastic changes in pronunciation. It should be noted that Caxton’s spelling faithfully reproduced the spelling of the preceding century and was conservative even in his day.
The effect of printing on the development of the language was so great that the year 1475 – the date of the publication of the first English book – is regarded as a turning point in English linguistic history and the start of a new period – NE.
As Britain consolidated into a single powerful state, it extended its borders to include Wales, Scotland and part of Ireland.
Thus by the end of the Early NE period, the area of English had expanded, to embrace the whole of the British Isles with the exception of some mountainous parts of Wales and Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, and some parts of Ireland, though in most of these regions the people were becoming bilingual.
The beginnings of the literary efflorescence go back to the 16th c. The age of literary flourishing is known as the “age of Shakespeare” or the age of Literary Renaissance. The most notable forerunners of the literary Renaissance in the first half of the 16th c. were the great English humanist Thomas More (1478 – 1535) and William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible. The chief work of Thomas More “Utopia” was finished in 1516. It was written in Latin and was first translated into English in 1551. In “Utopia” Th. More expressed his opposition to the way of life in contemporary England and drew a picture of an ideal imaginary society in which equality, freedom and well-being were enjoyed by all. More’s other works were written in English.
As elsewhere the Renaissance in England was a period of rapid progress of culture and a time of great men. The literature of Shakespeare’s generation proved exceptionally wealthy in writers of the first order.
It is universally recognized that Shakespeare outclassed all his contemporaries in all genres of drama and poetry (comedies, historical plays, tragedies and sonnets) and surpassed them all in his mastery of the English tongue. His works give an ideal representation of the literary language of his day. His vast vocabulary (amounting to over 20,000 words), freedom in creating new words and new meanings, versatility of grammatical construction reflect the fundamental properties of the language of the period.
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Towards the end of Early NE, i.e. by the middle of the 17th c., one of the forms of the national literary language – its Written Standard – had probably been established. The Written Standard can be traced to definite geographical and social sources.
The Written Standard of the early 17th c. was far less stabilized and normalized than the literary standards of later ages. The writings of the Renaissance display a wide range of variation at all linguistic levels: in spelling, in the shape of grammatical forms and word-building devices, in syntactical patterns and in the choice and use of words.
EVOLUTION OF THE SOUND SYSTEM
I. Vowel Changes:
1. The Great Vowel Shift.
2. Changes of Short Vowels.
3. Growth of Long Monophthongs and Diphthongs due to vocalisation of Consonants.
II. Evolution of Consonants:
1. Growth of Sibilants and Affricates.
2. Treatment of Fricative Consonants.
3. Loss of Consonants.
III. Historical foundations of Modern English Spelling.
I. Vowel Changes:
The Great Vowel Shift
Early NE witnessed the greatest event in the history of English vowels – the Great Vowel Shift – which involved the change of all ME long monophthongs, and probably some of the diphthongs.
The Great Vowel Shift is the name given to a series of changes of long vowels between the 14th and 18th c. During this period all the long vowels became closer or were diphthongised. The changes can be defined as “independent”, as they were not caused by any apparent phonetic conditions in the syllable or in the word, but affected regularly every stressed long vowel in any position.
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The Great Vowel Shift
| ME | NE | ME | NE | |
| I: | ai | Time [ti:mэ] | Time | |
| Finden ['fi:ndэn] | Find | |||
| e: | I: | Keepen ['ke:pэn] | Keep | |
| Field ['fe:ld] | Field | |||
| ε: | e: | I: | Street [strε:t] | Street |
| East [ε:st] | East | |||
| Stelen [stε:lэn] | Steal | |||
| a: | ei | Maken [ma:kэn] | Make | |
| Table [ta:blэ] | Table | |||
| כ: o: | u: | Stone [stכ:n] | Stone | |
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| Open ['כ:pэn] | open | ||
| o: | u: | Moon [mo:n] | Moon | |
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| Goos [go:s] | Goose | ||
| u: | au | Mous [mu:s] | Mouse | |
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| Founden ['fu:ndэn] | Found | ||
| au | : | Cause ['kauz(э)] | Cause | |
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| Drawen ['drauэn] | draw | ||
It should be obvious from the table that the Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sounds to the vowel system; in fact, every vowel which developed under the shift can be found in Late ME. And nevertheless the Great Vowel Shift was the most profound and comprehensive change in the history of English vowels: every long vowel, as well as some diphthongs, were “shifted”, and the pronunciation of all the words with these sounds was altered.
It is important to note that the Great Vowel Shift (unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes) was not followed by any regular spelling changes: as seen from the examples the modification in the pronunciation of the words was not reflected in their written forms.
During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed, for they contained long vowels. Compare the names of some English letters before and after the shift:
ME: A [a:], E [e:], O [o:], I [I:], B [be:], K [ka:].
NE: A [ei], E [I:], O [כu], I [ai], B [bi:], K [kei].
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