Normalisation of the English Language

Normalisationis the fixing of the norms and standards of a language to protect it from corruption and change.

Type of Standard	Written Standard	Spoken Standard
Time Limits	by the 17th c.	end of the 18th c.
Sources	Language of Chaucer (the London Dialect)	private letters; speech of characters in drama; references to speech be scholars.
Peculiarities	1. less stabilised than at later stage; 2. wide range of variation (spelling, gr. forms, syntactical patterns, choice of words, etc. ); 3. rivalry with Latin in the field of science, philosophy, didactics.	1. As spoken standard the scholars considered the speech of educated people taught at school as “correct English”. This was the speech ofLondon and that of Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

The normalisation of the English language started in the 17^th – 18^th c. In 1710 Jonathan Swiftpublished in his journal “The Tatler” an article titled “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue”. J. Swift was a purist (struggled for the purity of the language) and suggested that a body of scholars should gather to fix the rules of the language usage.

The Normalisation of the English language consisted in publishing:

1. Grammar’s of English:

• John Wallis, “Grammatica Lingæ Anglicanæ” (prescriptive/normative grammar);
• Robert Lowth, “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” (Lowth distinguished 9 parts of speech; made consistent description of letters, syllables, words and sentences; rules of no-double negation (I don’t want no dinner – incorrect!) and no-double comparison (more better – incorrect!) appeared, etc.).

 Dictionaries(18^th c.):

• E. Coles, “Dictionary of Hard Words” (gave explanations of hard words and phrases);
• Samuel Johnson– one of the best-known English lexicographers. As well as J. Swift, he was a purist and believed that the English language should be purified and corrected. He was the first to compile a dictionary that resembles the present-day dictionaries. His “Dictionary of the English Language” is the finest example of his hard and productive work. The dictionary is organised as follows:

• entry;
• pronunciation;
• definition;
• illustrations (not self-invented examples but quotations from recognised authors that contain the word in question);
• notes on usage of the word;
• etymology of the word;
• stylistic comments.

The dictionary also contained a grammatical section describing the grammatical structure of the language.

 

Old English phonetic structure as compared to that of modern English

Lecture 10 Phonetic Features of Old English

OE sound system developed from PG sound system.

OE Word Stress/Accent:

1. fixed(can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);
2. dynamic(force, breath stress);
3. in Noun and Adjectivestress was mainly on the prefixif there was one:

E.g. ‘misdæd (misdeed), ‘uðζenζ (escape), ‘oreald (very old)

in Verbstress was mainly on the root even if there was a prefix:

E.g. a’risan (arise), mis’faran (go astray)

1. stress served to distinguish Noun from Verb (and still does):

E.g. ‘andswaru (N answer) – and’swarian (V answer)

‘onζin (N beginning) – on’ζinnan (V begin)

E.g. (modern English) – ‘present – pre’sent; ‘ally – al’ly.

OE Vowels

Unstressed vowelswere weakened and dropped.

Stressed vowelsunderwent some changes:

• splitting– 1 phoneme split into several allophones which later become separate phonemes

e.g. à a

a à ã

à æ

• merging– separate phonemes become allophones of one phoneme and then disappear and are not distinguished any more as separate phonemes

e.g. a à

ãà a

æà

Rise of Diphthongs

In PG there were no diphthongs. There was just a sequence of two separate vowels. Diphthongs appeared in OE: some (usually long diphthongs) – as a result of merging of two vowels:

Sounds	Diphth.	Gothic	OE
a + u à	ea:	auso	eare (ear)
e + u à	eo:	þeudans	þēoden (king)
(i + u)à	(io:)(dialectal variant)	diups	dīop (deep)

others (usually short diphthongs) – as a result of the influence of the succeeding and preceding consonants (breaking of [æ, e]):

Monoph.	Diphth.	Influence	Gothic	OE
æ à	ea	before l	alls	eall (all)
æ à	ea	before h	ahtau	eahta (eight)
e à	eo	before r	herza	heorte (heart)
æ à	ea	after sk’/k’	skadus	sceadu (shade)
æ: à	ea:	after j	jâr	ζēar (year)

Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation –a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation(or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c.and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic (that’s why later it will be used for comparison).

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

• [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;
• new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

before palatal mutation	after palatal mutation	Gothic	OE
a à o à æ à	e	badi	bedd (bed)
a: à	æ:	dails	dælan (deal)
ŏ/ō à	ĕ/ē	mōtjan	mētan (meet)
ŭ/ū à	ŷ/ỹ(labialised)(new!)	fulljan	fyllan (fill)
ĕă/ēā à ĕŏ/ēō à	ĭě/īē (new!)	eald (early OE)	ieldra (late OE)

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);
2. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);
3. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).

OE Vowel System(symmetrical, i.e each short vowel had its long variant)

	Monophthongs							+	Diphthongs
Short	ĭ	ĕ	ă	ǽ	ŏ	ŭ	ŷ		ĕŏ	ĕă	ĭě
Long	ī	ē	ā	æ	ō	ū	ỹ		ēō	ēā	īē

The length of vowels was phonologically relevant (i.e. served to distinguish words):

e.g. (OE) is (is) – īs (ice); col (coal) –cōl (cool); god (god) – gōd (good), etc.

OE Consonants

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1. Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

[ð] à	[d]	rauðr (Icelandic)	rēad (OE) (red)
[v] à	[b]	-	-
[γ] à	[g]	guma (Gothic)	ζuma (OE) (man)

1. Voicing(the process when a voiceless consonant becomes voiced in certain positions) – intervocally and between a vowel and a voiced consonant or sonorant

[f, q, h, s] à [v, ð, g, z] e.g. wulfos (Gothic) – wulf[v]as (OE) (wolves)

1. Rhotacism(a process when [z] turns into [r])

e.g. maiza (Gothic) – māra (OE) (more)

1. Gemination(a process of doubling a consonant) – after a short vowel, usually happened as a result of palatal mutation (e.g. fullan (OE) (fill), settan (OE) (set), etc.).

1. Palatalisation of Consonants(a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel

[g, γ, k, h] à [g’, γ’, k’, h’]e.g. c[k’]ild (OE) (child); ecζ[gg’] (OE) (edge), etc.

1. Loss of Consonants:

• sonorants before fricatives (e.g. fimf (Gothic) – fīf (OE) (five));
• fricatives between vowels and some plosives (e.g. sæζde (early OE) – sæde (late OE) (said));
• loss of [j] – as a result of palatal mutation (see examples above);
• loss of [w] (e.g. case-forms of nouns: sæ (Nominative) – sæwe (Dative) (OE) (sea).

OE Consonant System

Lecture 11 The Development of Vowel System in Middle English and New English

Word Stress/Accent:

In ME and NE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation.

Recessive tendency –stress in loan-words moved closer to the beginning of the word (e.g. in French words the stress is usually placed on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable, but the stress in the words of the French origin that penetrated into English has moved to the beginning of the word).

E.g. ME vertu [ver’tju:] – NE virtue [‘vз:t∫ə]

Rhythmic tendency – regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables (3 or more) that creates rhythm and has led to the appearance of the secondary stress.

E.g. ME diso’beien – NE ,diso’bei

Vowels

English vowels proved to be more changeable than consonants. Long vowels proved to be more changeable than short ones.

Middle English

The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows:

1. Quantitative:

Reduction –weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. As far as the stress was mainly on the root the vowels in prefixes and suffixes got weak and underwent reduction. In unstressed position only two vowels were left – [ə] and [i]. They had never been contrasted.

E.g. ME tale [‘ta:lə], body [‘bodi]

In NE sound [ə] (schwa) was dropped at the end of the words but the letter e was left in spelling to show the length of the preceding vowel.

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)

E.g.

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

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

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

E.g.

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)

1. Qualitative:

The system of vowels in ME were no longer symmetrical as it was in OE

Short Vowels

• [y]changed to [i]e.g. OE hyll – ME hill (hill);
• [æ]changed to [a]e.g. OE wæs – ME was (was).

As a result:

i

e

a

o

u

Long Vowels

• [ỹ]changed to [ī];
• [ǽ]fell together with [έ];
• [ā]changed to [ō]e.g. OE stān – ME sto[o:]ne(stone).

As a result:

		close		open
ī	ū	ē	ō	έ	ǿ

New Diphthongs

OE diphthongs turned into monophthongs:

OE Diphth.	ME Sounds	OE	ME
ĭě/īē à	i	līehtan	lighten (lighten)
ĕŏ/ēō à	e	heorte	herte (heart)
ĕă/ēā à	æ	ēast	eest (east)

New diphthongs appeared due to vocalisationof [j], [γ] and [w]. These consonants turned into vowels ([i], [u]and [u] respectively) and became the glides of the new diphthongs:

i-glides	OE	ME	u-glides	OE	ME
[ei]	weζ[j]	wey[i](way)	[iu]	-	-
[ai]	mæζ[j]	may[i](may)	[au]	laζ[γ]u	law[u]e [‘lauə] (low)
[oi](in French loan-words)		boy, toy	[ou]	cnāw[w]an	know[u]en [‘knouən] (know)

New English

Great Vowel Shift – the change that happened in the 14^th – 16^th c.and affected all long monophthongs + diphthong [au]. As a result these vowels were:

• diphthongized;
• narrowed (became more closed);
• both diphthongized and narrowed.

ME Sounds	NE Sounds	ME	NE
[i:] à	[ai]	time [‘ti:mə]	time[teim]
[e:] à	[i:]	kepen[‘ke:pən]	keep[ki:p]
[a:] à	[ei]	maken[‘ma:kən]	make[meik]
[o:] à à	[ou] [u:]	stone[‘sto:nə] moon[mo:n]	stone[stoun] moon[mu:n]
[u:] à	[au]	mous[mu:s]	mouse[maus]
[au] à	[o:]	cause[‘kauzə]	cause [ko:z]

This shift was not followed by spelling changes, i.e. it was not reflected in written form. Thus the Great Vowel Shift explains many modern rules of reading.

Short Vowels

ME Sounds	NE Sounds	ME	NE
[a] à à	[æ] [o]after [w]!!	that [qat] man [man] was [was] water [‘watə]	that [ðæt] man [mæn] was [woz] water [‘wotə]
[u] à	[Λ]	hut [hut] comen [cumen]	hut [hΛt] come [cΛm]

There were exceptions though, e.g. put, pull, etc.

 

Vocalisation of [r]

It occurred in the 16^th – 17^th c. Sound [r] became vocalised (changed to [ə] (schwa)) when stood after vowels at the end of the word.

Consequences:

• new diphthongs appeared: [εə], [iə], [uə];
• the vowels before [r] were lengthened (e.g. arm [a:m], for [fo:], etc.);
• triphthongs appeared: [aiə], [auə] (e.g. shower [‘∫auə], shire [‘∫aiə]).

 

 

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