Back Mutation (linguistics)

Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries. Its reconstruction is necessarily somewhat speculative, but features of Old English pronunciation have been inferred based on the sounds used in modern varieties of English (including dialects), the spellings used in Old English literature, analysis of Old English poetry, and comparison with other Germanic languages.

Some words were pronounced differently in different dialects of Old English. The dialect called West Saxon is the best documented in surviving texts, and so is commonly treated as a default reference in descriptions of Old English, even though it is not a direct ancestor of the modern English language (which is more closely related to the Mercian dialect).

Old English had a distinction between short and long (doubled) consonants, at least between vowels (as seen in "sun" and "son", "to put" and "to steal"), and a distinction between short vowels and long vowels in stressed syllables. It had a larger number of vowel qualities in stressed syllables ( and in some dialects ) than in unstressed ones (). It had diphthongs that no longer exist in Modern English (such as ), with both short and long versions.

Consonants

The inventory of consonant surface sounds (whether allophones or phonemes) of Old English is shown below. Allophones are enclosed in parentheses.

The following consonants were generally both spelled and pronounced approximately as in modern English: . Others are described at Help:IPA/Old English and discussed below.

Gemination

There was a contrast between short consonant sounds, such as the in 'slayers', and long consonant sounds, such as the in 'summon': long consonants were represented in writing with double consonant letters. Long consonants are also called geminate consonants (or just "geminates") from the Latin word 'twin, double'.

Geminate consonants could not occur in all positions in a word. Typically, they were found after a stressed short vowel and before a vowel or sonorant, as in 'kin' (genitive), 'better'. Geminates were shortened next to other consonants, at the end of a word, or after an unstressed vowel. In writing, however, double consonant letters were sometimes used in some of these contexts by analogy to inflected forms, or as etymological spellings. It is likely that early on, short and long consonants did contrast in word-final position, but even early texts show variation in spelling in this position: e.g. between and 'bed', pronounced something like . It seems that geminate consonants could cause a preceding long vowel to be shortened, although this change may have been sporadic or the long vowel may have been subject to analogical restoration in some cases.

The short-long contrast was distinctive for most consonant phonemes: minimal pairs can be cited for long and short , and also for and assuming that phonetic , are phonemically analyzed as , . Sometimes and are instead analyzed as separate phonemes, in which case neither has a distinctive length contrast. The affricate was always phonetically long between vowels; it could also occur after or at the end of a word. There seems to have been no merge between and at the end of a word, so there was a distinction in pronunciation between 'way', pronounced , and 'wedge', pronounced or . The approximant was always short. The fricative could be short or long, but geminate was fairly marginal. In the context of verb conjugation, intervocalic singleton often originated from Proto-Germanic and showed alternation with the geminate . The change of intervocalic to had the effect of eliminating former minimal pairs between versus . The fricative (spelled ) came to be lost when single between voiced sounds; since only long remained in this position (in words such as , ), its length was no longer contrastive. Spellings with single for original are sometimes seen, e.g. , . Length was not distinctive for the phoneme , which originated from a cluster and was probably always phonetically long when it came between vowels within a word, and phonetically short in word-initial or word-final position.

Fricative voicing

The three phonemes , which all belong to the phonetic category of fricatives, had different pronunciations depending on the context (allophones). One set of allophones, transcribed as , were phonetically voiceless. The other set of allophones, transcribed as , were phonetically voiced. The difference between and was generally not marked in Old English spelling. The sounds were both written as , the sounds were both written as , and the sounds were both written as either or (the two letters were not used in Old English to distinguish between the voiceless and voiced versions of this sound). However, certain alternative spellings existed for some sounds (e.g. was sometimes written , as in Latin).

The pronunciation of as versus was generally predictable from context. The voiced allophones were used when one of these phonemes was surrounded on both sides by voiced sounds ( between vowels, between a vowel and a voiced consonant, or between voiced consonants) and immediately preceded by a syllable with some degree of stress. For example, the phoneme was pronounced as the voiced sound in the words 'earth' and 'fathom', which can be phonemically transcibed as , and phonetically transcribed as , . The voiceless allophones were used next to voiceless consonants, at the beginning and end of words, after unstressed syllables, and at the start of the second elements of compound words.

The allophones and alternated in contexts such as the following:
* ('calf, young cow') vs. ('calves') (phonemically and )
* ('blacksmith') vs. ('blacksmiths') (phonemically and )
* ('house' noun) vs. ('to house') (phonemically and )

Exceptions to voicing

There may have been some exceptions to the distribution of and according to these rules.

One category of potential exceptions is words where the fricative originally stood after an unstressed vowel, but the vowel was lost (a sound change called syncope). Examples include the Old English words 'strength' and 'to take an oath', from Proto-West-Germanic and , with loss of the medial unstressed vowel . These words may have been pronounced and , with voiceless and .
* A piece of evidence for fricatives being voiceless in this context is the verb 'to bless', which contains the same suffix attached to the root of 'blood'. The replacement of voiced with voiceless suggests that in this word was a phonetically voiceless sound.
* On the other hand, there is evidence that some word-medial fricatives did become voiced after syncope. Old English or evolved from Proto-West-Germanic , and Old English evolved from Proto-West-Germanic , with loss of unstressed and respectively. The modern English forms of these words, ''anvil'' and ''scythe'', are pronounced with the voiced fricative sounds and .

Another category of potential exceptions is words where original geminate became shortened, such as (derived from by metathesis of to ).

Despite the evidence for some exceptions to the voicing of word-medial to in Old English, it is not clear that voiced and voiceless fricatives contrasted in this context. Some scholars have argued that the contrast had already become phonemic (if marginally so) in Old English whereas , citing the absence of minimal pairs, argues that they were not lexically contrastive segments and so should be analyzed as allophones during Old English, even if their distribution was not determined solely by phonology.

The Old English fricative voicing rule did not apply to the fricatives (spelled ) or (spelled , often written in modern editions).
* In contexts where other fricatives became voiced, Proto-Germanic came to be lost entirely in Old English, though before it was lost it caused certain sound changes such as breaking of preceding vowels. Old English did possess a voiced velar fricative sound , which developed from Proto-Germanic , but is usually analyzed as a separate phoneme from : the sounds were normally distinguished in spelling, with written as and as , although some unetymological interchange of these spellings occurs, especially in word-final position (where the sounds seem to have merged into one phoneme by late Old English). The fricative seems to have instead been phonemically identified in Old English with the plosive , also written .
* The fricative developed later than other fricative sounds, as it evolved from the West Germanic cluster . It is likely that was pronounced as geminate between vowels, and possibly also at the end of a word after a short vowel. In Old English poetry, between vowels seems to have been treated metrically like a cluster rather than like a single consonant.

Origins of /f, θ, s/

The Old English phoneme descended in some cases from Proto-Germanic , which became between voiced sounds as described above. But also had another source. In the middle or at the end of words, Old English was often derived from Proto-Germanic * (also written ), a fricative allophone of the phoneme . Proto-Germanic became Old English only at the start of a word, after , or when geminated. In other contexts, it became Old English , pronounced either as or based on its position (the originally voiced fricative was devoiced before voiceless sounds or in final position):
* PG > OE ''stæf''
* PG > OE 'had', but PG > OE 'to have'

In contrast, the Old English phonemes and generally descend only from Proto-Germanic voiceless and . Proto-Germanic * (a fricative allophone of , sometimes derived by voicing of in the context of Verner's Law) regularly developed in all positions into the Old English stop , as in from Proto-Germanic . Proto-Germanic (which existed only as the Verner's Law counterpart of ) regularly developed to Old English (a sound change called rhotacism). As a result, some Old English verbs show alternations between and or between and , although in others this alternation was leveled, resulting in or throughout.

Examples of Old English verbs that retained inherited – or – alternations:
* from 'cut'
* from 'freeze'

Examples of Old English verbs that leveled the consonant to only or only :
* , versus 'wrap, twist'
* , versus 'gather'

Velar consonants

The voiceless velar plosive was typically spelled . The sound alternated in some circumstances with the voiceless palatal affricate , also spelled .

The voiced velar plosive and fricative were both typically spelled and can be analyzed as allophones of the same phoneme. In early Old English, the plosive was used only after , as in , or as part of the geminate , as in (also written ). (Geminate was uncommon, since West Germanic gemination caused palatalization.) In later Old English (possibly after around 950 or 1000 AD), was also used at the start of a word (or at the start of a morpheme in compound or prefixed words), but in early Old English, is believed to have been used in word-initial position. In both early and late Old English, was used medially after vowels or after consonants other than . The sounds and were mostly in complementary distribution. However, either sound could occur after , since phonetic occurred as the result of syncope in some words such as . The phonemic transcription used in this article ignores such exceptional cases and treats and as allophones of a phoneme . As with , the letter in Old English represented not only velar but also palatal consonant sounds: had a palatal counterpart and had a palatal counterpart , described in the following section.

The voiceless glottal fricative and voiceless velar fricative were both typically spelled and are generally considered allophones of a single phoneme, which can be analyzed as , at least in early Old English. The glottal allophone was used at the start of a word (or at the start of a morpheme in compound or prefixed words), whereas the velar allophone was used at the end of a syllable (by itself or in combination with another consonant) or as part of the geminate . Thus, ('dog') can be transcribed phonetically as , phonemically as . This phoneme is often assumed to have had a third allophone, a voiceless palatal fricative , used after front vowels (or possibly only after stressed front vowels). For example, ('boy') , may have been phonetically realized as .

The consonants and are analyzed as separate phonemes in at least the early stages of Old English, because it appears that they originally stood in direct contrast at the start of a word (as in 'good' vs. 'hood') or at the end of a word (as in 'lye' vs. 'clearing, meadow'). However, certain sound changes reduced the contrast between and in some later varieties of Old English.

* At the end of a word, and eventually merged in at least some dialects. This is shown by the use of spellings with for words that originally ended with , and also some cases of "inverted" spellings with a final for words that originally ended with . Such spellings occur regularly in Late West Saxon, and in Kentish texts from around 900 onwards, suggesting both sounds had come to be pronounced in this position (compare the devoicing of final ). They are not attested in older Kentish charters, and are seen only occasionally in Early West Saxon. Spellings with for original are comparatively rare in Anglian dialects, with hardly any clear examples in Northumbrian texts.

* In the middle of a word, was lost early on between voiced sounds. After this sound change, there was no direct contrast between and in this position. In the same dialects where final came to be spelled with , there are occasional examples of word-medial being written with : for example, for . Spellings like this have been interpreted as evidence that could be devoiced to in syllable-final, as well as in word-final position. Alternatively, the voiced sound may have been written here by analogy to the interchangeable use of the spellings and in word-final position. In support of the latter interpretation, points out examples of being used in place of medial at the start of a word-medial syllable, such as for .

It is possible that medial became reanalyzed as an allophone of after the sound changes described above. In Late West Saxon texts, and were in complementary distribution everywhere except for at the start of a word. Word-initial never merged with , but the eventual replacement of word-initial with the plosive might have been a consequence of the sound becoming phonemically reanalyzed as in this position.

A morphological contrast is seen between inflected forms with medial -- , and forms that show contraction of adjacent vowels after the loss of original intervocalic or . These alternate in certain classes of strong verbs as a result of Verner's Law:
an example is the strong class 6 infinitive (from Proto-West Germanic ) versus the corresponding plural past form (from Proto-West Germanic ).

The inflectional paradigms of some words show alternation between , , and as a result of devoicing and palatalization:
* ('day') , () vs. () (also ('dawn') )
* , ('castle') > , vs. () , vs. ()

Palatal consonants

The palatal consonants were represented in Old English spelling with the same letters as velar consonants or clusters :
* represented either palatal or velar .
* represented either palatal or velar . After the letter , it usually represented palatal or velar .
* or represented double consonants between vowels: either palatal or (rarely) velar .
* represented either palatal or velar .

Modern editors may mark the palatal consonants with a dot above the letter: , , . Historically, developed from by palatalization. Some cases of developed from palatalization of , while others developed from Proto-Germanic . Even though palatalization was originally a regular sound change, later sound changes and borrowings meant that the occurrence of the palatal forms was no longer predictable. Thus, palatal and velar consonants eventually became separate phonemes. But there is some debate about when the contrast became phonemic, as well as about when the palatal counterparts of evolved to affricates as opposed to palatal plosives . The forms and , attested around 900 AD as unetymological spellings of original and , are commonly interpreted as evidence that palatal had become an affricate , as it is assumed that these words underwent a change of to . However, because palatal and velar alliterate in English poetry up through at least the late tenth century, assumes that they were still allophones of a single phoneme before 1000. Likewise, word-initial palatal and velar alliterate with each other in early Old English verse (before the latter changed to , circa 950 AD), which interprets as evidence that and constituted allophones at this point in time, despite the existence of from Proto-Germanic. assumes that , and were all allophones of a phoneme at one point during the history of Old English.

Palatalized , according to , may have still been pronounced as a cluster rather than as a unitary consonant in some dialects at the end of Old English.

The distribution of velar and palatal consonants is described below.

* is always palatal at the start of a stressed syllable. In writing, the letter "e" was variably used as a diacritic to indicate its palatal quality before a back vowel: e.g. /ˈʃort/ was spelled either or , /ˈʃɑkɑn/ was spelled either or .
* are always palatal before stressed , and also before in most dialects; however, in Mercian, velar can be found in words that underwent "second fronting" of stressed to , followed by back umlaut (e.g. Mercian = West Saxon ).
* Before stressed , is always velar , and is usually velar . Palatal can occur before a stressed back vowel in words such as 'young' (which had originally in Proto-Germanic): this could be spelled , but spellings with initial , or are often seen instead, such as . Some scholars interpret spellings like as evidence that an epenthetic glide developed between the palatal consonant and the following back vowel, whereas others interpret in this context as a diacritic spelling where simply marks the palatal quality of the preceding consonant letter.
* Before stressed , are velar in cases where the vowel developed by i-umlaut of a back vowel: e.g. , , , . (The i-umlaut of original seems to have become unrounded early on, e.g .) Palatal are typically not found in stressed syllables in Early West Saxon, since palatal diphthongization (traditionally dated before i-umlaut) replaced them with respectively. However, these sequences are attested in some varieties of Old English. Spellings with for original , such as , , are attested in Anglian, although not universally: such words can also be spelled in Anglian texts with or , depending on the dialect and time period. In Kentish, palatal diphthongization did not occur, but the vowel eventually merged with : subsequently, either letter could be used regardless of a word's etymology. Thus, spellings such as , can be found in Kentish charters from the 9th century. Palatal arose regularly in non-West Saxon dialects in words containing the i-umlaut of (e.g. Mercian , Mercian , Kentish = Early West Saxon ) and can be found in Late West Saxon texts, which show (somewhat inconsistent) "smoothing" of Early West Saxon to after a palatal consonant, e.g. , , . Mercian texts that exhibit " second fronting" of to may contain in forms such as = Early West Saxon . Palatal diphthongization of does not seem to have been a consistent sound change outside of West Saxon (though there is some evidence in other dialects of being raised after palatals in certain words) so there are also examples where simply represents original , such as Mercian = Early West Saxon . Palatal occur in Late West Saxon words where corresponds to Early West Saxon : e.g. . The letter "y" could also be used in Late West Saxon in place of original , e.g. in for . After the merger of in Kentish, could be used as a "reverse" spelling for , as in Kentish .

Before unstressed vowels, can be palatal or velar depending on etymology. Velar can be found before unstressed back vowels in words such as , , , whereas palatal can be found before unstressed back vowels in words that originally contained an etymological *j or *i after the consonant, such as , , from Proto-Germanic , , . Velar can be found before an unstressed front vowel in class II weak verbs with an infinitive ending in ; e.g. , , . The front vowel is here derived from umlaut, unrounding, shortening and raising of original ''-ō-'': e.g. Proto-West-Germanic ''*makōn'' 'to make' was replaced with ''*makōjan,'' which is hypothesized to have developed through ''*makœ̅jan'' and ''*makejan'' to Old English . As seen from these examples, the sounds that etymologically caused palatalization of velar consonants also caused i-umlaut of the vowel in the preceding syllable. However, it is not always possible to predict whether a consonant is velar or palatal from the quality of the preceding vowel; some palatal consonants arose after the vowel , which is unchanged by i-umlaut (as in ; contrast ) and for historical reasons, some words developed palatal consonants between two back vowels (as in ).

The voiced affricate was found only in restricted contexts: it did not occur at the start of a word, and occurred medially or finally only after a nasal or in contexts where it was (at least originally) geminated. It was therefore in nearly complementary distribution with . However, phonetic occurred as the result of syncope in some words such as (a syncopated form of 'many; a multitude'). The transcription in this article ignores such exceptional cases and treats as an allophone of .
* ('to sing') , pronounced (from )
* ('bridge') , pronounced (from < )

In circumstances where the palatal affricates and came to be followed by another consonant due to syncope of an intervening vowel, they were eventually replaced with the corresponding velar plosives, and respectively. ( assume this replacement occurred before the palatalized variants had developed into affricates. assumes that such consonants were never affricated, but transcribes them as palatal in Old English.) The affricates do seem to have been used before other consonants in compound words, e.g. in 'bridge-repairing' and 'sedge-leek, rush-garlic'.

Sonorants

is an allophone of occurring before and . Words that have final in standard Modern English have the cluster in Old English.
* ('sink') , phonetically
* ('long') , phonetically (or )

The exact nature of Old English is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant , as in most Modern English accents; an alveolar flap ; or an alveolar trill .

The spellings , , , probably represented two-phoneme clusters, , where was pronounced (its usual allophone in syllable-initial position). In this context, may have been pronounced as voiceless sonorants . The status of , , , as clusters rather than unitary segments in Old English phonology is supported by their alliteration in poetry with each other and with prevocalic . In addition, variation is seen between the spellings and 'wave, sea', which suggests the in the first form was not a single consonant phoneme.

There is an alternative hypothesis that holds that (at least in later periods) in these sequences was not pronounced as an independent consonant sound, but was only a diacritic marking the voicelessness of the following sonorant. Original would merge with plain by early Middle English. The merger of and seems to have been completed earliest, by the middle of the eleventh century, based on frequent interchange of the spellings and in glosses from that time period. The merger of and may have taken somewhat longer to complete. The digraphs , and are attested to some extent in Middle English texts; e.g. the 12th-century Ormulum contains but also includes forms spelled with simple . The '' Ayenbite of Inwyt'' (written in 1340 by a Kentish English speaker who was probably born during the thirteenth century) contains spellings with and alongside spellings with and in words that had in Old English.

At least some of these mergers may have begun earlier. Old English scribes occasionally omitted the letter in words starting with these clusters. A merge of the cluster with is also attested in some historical and many current varieties of English, but has still not been completed, as some present-day speakers distinguish the former as . There is evidence of alliteration between and in some Old English poems.

Velarization

apparently had velarized allophones and or similar sounds when they were followed by another consonant or were geminated. That is suggested by the vowel shifts of breaking and retraction before , which could be cases of assimilation to a following velar consonant:
* > > ('learn')
* > > ('earth')
* > ('to fall')

Based on phonotactic constraints on initial clusters, proposed interpreting and as digraphs representing the velarized sounds in prevocalic position, in which case the distinction would be phonemic, as exhibited by minimal pairs such as "to grow" vs. "to ride" or "to look" vs. "to bend". However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with orthoepic and orthographic evidence from the Early Modern English era,
as well as borrowings into and from Welsh, which has and as genuine initial clusters. Furthermore, in Old English poetry, and can alliterate with each other as well as with followed by a vowel, as in "Wēn' ic þæt gē for wlenco, nalles for wræcsīðum" (Beowulf 338).

Vowels

Old English had a moderately large vowel system. In stressed syllables both monophthongs and diphthongs had short and long versions, which were clearly distinguished in pronunciation. In unstressed syllables, the number of vowel contrasts was generally reduced. Historically, unstressed vowels could be elided in some circumstances.

Monophthongs

Depending on dialect, Old English distinguished five to eight vowel qualities in stressed syllables. Each could appear as a long or a short monophthong. An example of two words distinguished by vowel length is ('god') versus ('good').

The front mid rounded vowel (spelled usually as ) existed only in some dialects; in others, it was unrounded and merged with . This merger is seen for both the long and short versions of the vowel in West Saxon and Kentish by around 900 AD, and was complete in Late West Saxon. In Anglian dialects long generally remains rounded, but short exhibits variable unrounding.

In Kentish, the vowels and also merged into sometime around the 9th century, leaving and as the only front vowels in this dialect.

The long and short versions of each vowel were probably pronounced with the same quality, although some reconstructions assume accompanying qualitative distinctions.
* Short are sometimes transcribed as "lax" , in contrast to "tense" for long .
* The long–short vowel pair developed into the Middle English vowels , with two different vowel qualities distinguished by height: suggests they may have had different qualities in late Old English as well.
* The back low vowels also generally show a qualitative distinction in Middle English: short usually became Middle English (merging with the outcome of short ), whereas long was raised to Middle English except in northern dialects. In Old English, short was probably pronounced as rounded before nasals, as is suggested by the fact that the word for "person", for example, is spelled as or .

Unstressed vowels

Unstressed syllables displayed fewer vowel contrasts. All unstressed vowels came to be shortened, and many texts only show a clear distinction in this context between three vowels, which can be phonemically transcribed as . Even this reduced three-way contrast was lost by Middle English, and the merger of unstressed seems in fact to have occurred before the end of the Old English period.
While they were probably still distinct in Early West Saxon as spoken in the late ninth century, their spellings become increasingly confused during the tenth and eleventh centuries; thus, Late West Saxon texts show interchange between endings such as , , .

In texts that show a three-way contrast between unstressed vowels, the letters and in unstressed syllables can be analyzed as contextual variants of the phonemes and respectively. In the case of , the variant seems to have been used in words ending in (e.g. ); or in general, in the environment of a following palatal consonant. In the case of , the quality was normally preserved in the endings or after an accented syllable containing the sound (as in ); in other contexts (e.g. , ), was variably interchanged with depending on dialect and time period, with the use of generally increasing over time, although there was a tendency to retain in absolute word-final position.

Unstressed developed from older and , and spellings with unstressed and can be seen in certain early Old English texts.

Diphthongs

All dialects of Old English had diphthongs. Diphthongs were written with digraphs composed of two vowel letters and were pronounced by gliding from one vowel quality to another within a single syllable. The two main spellings used to represent diphthongs were and .
* was pronounced like , gliding from the sound of the vowel to . (The spelling might have been used in place of because the latter would have essentially been a trigraph .)
* was pronounced like , gliding from the sound of the vowel to .

Diphthongs could be short or long. A short diphthong had the same length as a short single vowel, and a long diphthong had the same length as a long single vowel. As with monophthongs, their length was not systematically marked in Old English manuscripts, but is inferred from other evidence, such as a word's etymological origins or the pronunciation of its descendants. Modern editions conventionally mark long diphthongs with a macron on the first letter: e.g. long , in contrast to short , . In this article, short diphthongs such as are transcribed like , and long diphthongs such as are transcribed like .

Some dialects had additional diphthongs:
* , were found in Northumbrian, but were absent from Late West Saxon, having merged with , (a merger also found to varying extents in other dialects). The quality of is reconstructed as or . The spelling is attested in Early West Saxon, but it varies with the spelling , suggesting the merger had already taken place in this dialect as of around 900 AD. In Mercian, and are distinguished only in the earliest glosses; they merge in later texts, yielding as in West Saxon. In Kentish short tended to merge as , whereas long tended to merge as . In contexts where i-umlaut occurred, corresponds instead in West Saxon to or later ~ (see below), as in Northumbrian , Mercian , Early West Saxon "darkness".
* , were found only in Early West Saxon. The quality of is disputed: some scholars reconstruct it as , but others argue it was or . An alternative hypothesis is that it was a monophthong with an intermediate quality between and . By the time of Alfred the Great, the diphthongs , were apparently monophthongized to a vowel known as "unstable ''i''", whose pronunciation is still uncertain. It later went on to merge with according to spellings such as for earlier and ('to believe'). (According to another interpretation, however, the "unstable i" may simply have been , and the later can be explained by the fact that Late West Saxon was not a direct descendant of Early West Saxon. See Old English dialects.) That produced additional instances of alongside those that developed from i-mutation and from sporadic rounding of in certain circumstances (e.g. 'much' from earlier with rounding perhaps triggered by the rounded ). All instances of were normally unrounded next to , and : hence from earlier 'to give'.

Thus, the inventory of diphthongs in Late West Saxon was as follows:

The table above displays how Old English vowel digraphs are commonly interpreted, but there are various debates about the pronunciation and phonemic analysis of these spellings.

Diphthong controversies

The phonetic realization of Old English diphthongs is controversial.

During the 20th century, various academic articles disputed the reconstruction of "short diphthongs", arguing that they were actually monophthongs (on the phonetic level, the phonemic level, or both). However, in response to these proposals, further arguments have been made in support of the proposition that short digraphs did in fact represent phonetic diphthongs. argues that a contrast between long and short diphthongs is not necessarily phonologically implausible, noting it is attested in some modern languages, such as Scots, where the short diphthong in ''tide'' contrasts with the long diphthong in ''tied'' . In contrast, considers the evidence for the phonemic status of short diphthongs to be unconvincing and prefers to analyze short , as allophones of , or at most, as semi-contrastive entities that never became completely distinct phonemes from the corresponding short monophthongs.

Assuming vowel digraphs were in fact pronounced as phonetic diphthongs, they may have been the 'falling' type (where the first portion of the diphthong was more prominent, and the second part was a non-syllabic offglide. Alternatively, both components may have been more or less equal in prominence.

The primary feature that distinguished from seems to have been the height of the first component of the diphthong: the start of sounded like whereas the start of sounded like . The second component of any diphthong (whether original or from breaking) seems to have originally been high back rounded (or ). Diphthongs seem to have still ended in this quality at the time when i-umlaut occurred. assumes the qualities continued to be used into Old English for respectively, but acknowledges that their values may have been different in late Old English. assume that by the 9th century, the second component of had become lowered and unrounded (aside from in the minority of regions where the alternative spelling was used for this diphthong). Both components of are low vowels and both components of are mid vowels. propose that Old English diphthongs were " height-harmonic", that is, that both parts of any diphthong had the same vowel height (high, mid or low) as a rule. The reconstruction of as and early West Saxon as is consistent with this principle of height harmony. However, do not find height harmony convincing as a general rule, arguing that the later development of points instead to the value . considers the lowering of the second element of diphthongs to be related to the development of unstressed vowel qualities; while acknowledging that the height of the first element affected the outcome of the second, Hogg rejects height harmony as an overarching principle, and supposes that came to be pronounced in Old English, with only being its early or archaic value. Some other scholars have reconstructed and as ending in an unrounded schwa-like glide in Old English. However, there is evidence that Old English had rounded outcomes in some dialects of Middle English.

Another controversy concerns the development of from , and of from , in the context of West Saxon palatal diphthongization. It is difficult to explain why would become after a palatal consonant; accordingly, rejects the reality of this sound change and considers the digraphs in this context to be merely an orthographic device used to indicate that were preceded by a palatal consonant. The mainstream position is that and were genuinely diphthongized in this position; it has been proposed that their initial outcomes were something like , with subsequently merging with .

Sources of diphthongs

Old English diphthongs have several origins. Long diphthongs developed partly from the Proto-Germanic diphthongs and partly from Old English vowel shifts. Short diphthongs developed only from Old English vowel shifts. Here are examples of diphthongs inherited from Proto-Germanic:
* PG > OE 'death'
* PG > OE 'animal' > Modern English ''deer''
* PG > Anglian , West Saxon ' am'

Three vowel shifts produced diphthongs: breaking, back mutation, and palatal diphthongization. Breaking caused Anglo-Frisian short ''*æ, *e, *i'' to develop into the short diphthongs , , before or a consonant cluster beginning with . Anglo-Frisian long ''*ǣ, *ī'' developed into the diphthongs and before :
* PG > Anglo-Frisian ''*lirnian'' > Anglian , West Saxon ''leornian'' 'learn'
* PG > AF ''*nǣh'' > Old English 'near'

Back mutation changed , and sometimes to , and before a back vowel in the next syllable:
* PG > AF ''*sefon'' > OE 'seven'
* PG > OE 'from beneath'

Palatal diphthongization changed , , , to the diphthongs , , , respectively after the palatalized consonants , , and :
* PG > AF ''*jefan'' > 'give'

In addition, the back vowels , , (long or short) could be spelled as , , respectively after , , or . However, rather than indicating the development of a diphthong, these spellings might have just been a convention for marking palatal consonants before a back vowel, since the modern English descendants of such words do not display the typical evolution of the diphthong to a front vowel:
* PG > OE 'young' (Modern English )
* PG > 'should' (Modern English )

Peter Schrijver has theorized that Old English breaking developed from language contact with Celtic languages. He says that two Celtic languages were spoken in Britain, Highland British Celtic, which was phonologically influenced by British Latin and developed into Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and Lowland British Celtic, which was brought to Ireland at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain and became Old Irish. Lowland British Celtic had velarization like Old and Modern Irish, which gives preceding vowels a back offglide. That feature came by language contact to Old English and resulted in backing diphthongs.

Early West Saxon , developed from i-mutation of , or , (at the time of i-mutation, the merger of the latter with , seems to have not yet occurred). In dialects other than West Saxon, i-mutation instead turned , into , and left , unchanged.

Stress

As in modern English, there was a distinction in Old English between stressed and unstressed syllables. Stress typically could be found only on the first or leftmost syllable of a root morpheme. In morphologically simple words, this is equivalent to the first syllable of the word: e.g. 'evil', pronounced . Non-initial syllables within a morpheme were unstressed.

Inflectional suffixes are inferred to have been fully unstressed, based on the absence of alliteration involving these syllables (although in words with multiple unstressed syllables in a row, such as 'they did', it is possible that there was some kind of alternating rhythm). Fully unstressed syllables did not contain long vowels or diphthongs.

When a simple word was extended by a derivational suffix, or when two roots capable of standing as free words were combined to form a compound, the primary stress fell on the first syllable of the leftmost root. However, there may have been secondary stress in some circumstances on the first syllable of the later element. In Old English verse, the first root of a compound participates in alliteration, whereas the second root of a compound can be involved in alliteration only as a supporting element, if it starts with the same consonant as the first root. Derivational suffixes and the second elements of compound words appear to display a wider range of vowel contrasts than inflectional suffixes: for example, a diphthong can be seen in the second syllable of the word spelled 'honorless' derived from the morphemes 'honor' and 'devoid of, bereft of' (as a suffix, '-less'). Since vowel length was not written in Old English, it is less clear to what extent long vowels may have been shortened, or conversely, analogically restored, in such derivational suffixes.

When a word started with a prefix, the primary stress could fall either on the first syllable of the prefix, or on the first syllable of the root that followed the prefix. Whether a prefix was stressed or unstressed depended on the identity of the prefix and on the part of speech of the word. The prefixes and were always fully unstressed, and the prefix was nearly always unstressed. In contrast, the prefixes and always received primary stress. Other prefixes seem to have generally received primary stress in nouns or adjectives, but not in verbs or adverbs. The prefix , used on numerals for the decades 70-120, was unstressed.

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is the study of the sequences of phonemes that occur in languages and the sound structures that they form. When describing syllable structure, a capital letter C can be used to represent a consonant sound and a capital letter V can be used to represent a vowel sound, so a syllable such as 'be' is described as having CV structure (one consonant followed by one vowel). The IPA symbol that shows a division between syllables is the dot .

Old English stressed syllables were structured as (C)³V(C)⁴; that is, one vowel as the nucleus with zero to three consonant phonemes in the onset and zero to four consonant phonemes in the coda. An example of a stressed syllable with the minimal number of phonemes would be 'law, statute', whereas an example of a stressed syllable with nearly the maximum number of phonemes would be (the syncopated second-person singular present form of the strong verb 'bring').

Onset

Onset clusters typically consist of a obstruent followed by a sonorant , although is allowed as a third element before voiceless stops, and is allowed before . The consonants occur only on their own. (If are accepted as their own phonemes, the same can be said of these consonants and of , but these are normally analyzed respectively as .) Some have proposed analyzing clusters of and a voiceless stop as single segments. In Old English alliterative poetry, a word-initial sequence of + voiceless stop alliterates only with itself (with or without a following liquid): that is, and count as a match, as do and , but and do not alliterate with each other.

Unpalatalized and did not occur as a rule at the start of a word, since in inherited vocabulary, original * came to be palatalized in this position regardless of what sound followed it. The cluster could be found word-medially before a back vowel, e.g. in the words and , although the lack of palatalization in such forms might imply that the was shared between the first and second syllable. The cluster probably occurred medially in , judging by the forms of the related Middle English and Modern English ''masker''. assumes that was found at the start of the word , from Latin , but transcribes it as ; the form from Latin shows that palatalized could come to be used at the start of Old English words taken from Latin.

The onset was optional, so syllables could start with a vowel phoneme. In Old English poetry, stressed syllables starting with vowel phonemes all alliterate with each other (regardless of whether the vowels are the same or different). A glottal stop consonant may have been phonetically inserted in this position. ( views alliteration as inconclusive evidence for initial .)

Nucleus

The syllable nucleus was always a vowel in stressed syllables. Stressed monosyllabic words always ended in either a consonant or a long vowel (whether a long monophthong or long diphthong): this can be stated in terms of stressed words having at least two moras of length. In words of two or more syllables, it was possible for the stressed syllable to end in a short vowel (called a light syllable), although two-syllable words more often had a heavy first syllable (one that ended in a consonant or long vowel).

It is possible that certain sonorant consonants, such as or , could serve as the nucleus of an unstressed syllable. However, it is difficult to determine whether or in which contexts consonants were syllabic in Old English, because the relevant forms show variable spelling (a vowel letter, presumably representing an epenthetic vowel sound, could often be inserted before the sonorant) and variable behavior in verse.

Coda

In general, Old English permitted similar kinds of clusters of coda consonants as modern English. In morphologically simple words, most coda clusters started with a sonorant or .

Long (geminate) consonants seem to have become simplified to single consonants when not between vowels. However, (analyzed above as long ) did not merge with single in this context, but remained a distinct coda.

The following tables show some examples of coda clusters that could occur in Old English, while not necessarily constituting an exhaustive list. Although might be categorized as a resonant, it had non-resonant allophones, and so will be listed alongside obstruent consonants in the tables below.

Some codas with an obstruent preceded by more than one resonant are attested, often as the result of syncope, e.g:
* , as in
* , , as in ,
* , as in (a sycopated variant form of )
* , , as in , (syncopated variant forms of and , the past participle and third person present singular of = )

The following additional two-obstruent coda clusters may rarely occur:
* was normally replaced with , but there are some variant spellings with final , such as , which may represent the original pronunciation.
* was normally replaced with , but some variant spellings with final can be found, such as for . It is possible that early on, the letter was used to represent rather than .
* , as in , , (past of ). This could become by metathesis, as in ~ 'curly' from Latin .
* , as in . Uncommon compared to , and often varies with (as in ) by metathesis.
* , , as in ,
* might occur at the end of some Kentish verb forms spelled with , namely and . ( marks these with but assumes was phonetically a palatal stop, rather than affricate, when followed by another consonant. transcribe them with dotless , assuming that preconsonantal had already been replaced with velar in Old English.)
* was apparently regularly assimilated to (which in turn was degeminated in syllable-final position to ), as in the nominative forms of the nouns and , which would etymologically be and . Some variant spellings can be found that do not show this simplification, but it is unclear whether the consonant was ever restored in pronunciation.

Additional possible three-obstruent clusters include:
* , as in (third-person singular present form of , smoothed variant of ), if not simply a morphological spelling for .

Although resonant consonants such as or could occur word-finally after another consonant, there is some uncertainty about whether they were pronounced as coda consonants or as syllabic consonants (forming unstressed syllable nuclei) in this context. The tables below show word-final sequences ending in a resonant consonant:

†It is assumed that geminate consonants such as , , were simplified by the Old English period to single consonants when entirely in a syllable coda.

‡The final in words ending in , , could potentially become syllabic or have an epenthetic vowel inserted before it; see below. This possibly could apply also to the final in .

Because of the loss of certain vowels in final syllables, Proto- West-Germanic came to have words ending in sequences of an obstruent consonant followed by a resonant consonant: for example, Proto-Germanic developed to Proto-West-Germanic ''*xlaxtr''. In the past, it was sometimes assumed that a resonant consonant in such a position must necessarily be syllabic. This assumption is false: there are languages where a syllable can end in an obstruent followed by a resonant, as demonstrated by modern Icelandic, where are all monosyllables. There is evidence that this type of coda cluster eventually became disallowed in Old English, because many such words show a spelling with a vowel letter inserted before the consonant, such as . However, some words could be spelled with or without an inserted vowel letter in Old English, raising the question of whether there was also variation between different pronunciations. Based on the treatment of such words in poetry, argues that their pronunciation changed either during or shortly before the time period when Old English literature was written: when not etymologically preceded by a vowel, resonant consonants in this position were generally nonsyllabic in early Old English verse, whereas in late Old English verse, they came to be syllabic (or preceded by an epenthetic vowel). Fulk finds that the syllabic pronunciations are generally used consistently in poetry from the ninth century or later. The development of a syllabic pronunciation seems to have been affected by the identity of the resonant, the identity of the consonant preceding the resonant, and the weight of the syllable.

* Word-final consonant + sequences are practically always spelled with an epenthetic vowel letter in Old English manuscripts, e.g. , , , although these epenthetic vowels do not always count as syllables in early Old English poetry.
* Word-final consonant + sequences may be spelled with or without an epenthetic vowel depending on the identity of the consonant. An inserted vowel letter is never seen in , and usually not in , , , , , , but is seen often in other combinations, e.g. , , , , . In poetry, never scans as its own syllable after .
* Word-final consonant + sequences show considerable variability. Spellings with an epenthetic vowel seem to be generally uncommon in words ending with a short vowel + single consonant + , e.g. , , , although a few spellings with inserted are attested early on (namely and ) and others are attested in late West Saxon. In cases where word-final is preceded by more than one consonant, or by a syllable containing a long vowel or diphthong, the inclusion of an epenthetic vowel letter is variable, possibly affected by dialect.
* Word-final sequences of a consonant + never scan as a separate syllable in poetry, and are never spelled with an epenthetic vowel letter in early West Saxon: e.g. , , , , , . In texts from other time periods or dialects, spellings with (e.g. late West Saxon , ) or (e.g. Mercian ) can be found except for in words ending with or .

Sound changes

Like Frisian, Old English underwent palatalization of the velar consonants and fronting of the open vowel to in certain cases. Old English also underwent vowel shifts that were not shared with Old Frisian: smoothing, diphthong height harmonization and breaking. Diphthong height harmonization and breaking resulted in the unique Old English diphthongs , , , .

Palatalization yielded some Modern English word pairs in which one word has a velar and the other has a palatal or postalveolar. Some of these were inherited from Old English (''drink'' and ''drench'', ''day'' and ''dawn''), and others have an unpalatalized form loaned from Old Norse ( and ).

Dialects

Old English had four major dialect groups: Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian. Kentish and West Saxon were the dialects spoken south of a line approximately following the course of the River Thames: Kentish in the easternmost portion of that area and West Saxon everywhere else. Mercian was spoken in the middle part of England and was separated from the southern dialects by the Thames and from Northumbrian by the River Humber. Mercian and Northumbrian are often grouped together as "Anglian".

Modern English descends 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, the spelling of the verb ''bury'' is derived from West Saxon, but the pronunciation is derived from Kentish.

The largest dialectal differences in Old English occurred between West Saxon and the other groups and occurred mostly in the front vowels, particularly the diphthongs. In Kentish, the vowels , , would eventually all merge as (long and short). The primary differences between dialects were the following:
*Original (derived from Proto-West-Germanic by Anglo-Frisian brightening) remained as in West Saxon, but was raised to in Anglian. This preceded other changes such as breaking and the development of by i-umlaut of Old English (from Proto-Germanic ). Thus, West Saxon ('to sleep') appears as in Anglian, but ('to divide') from appears the same in both dialects. (Note the corresponding vowel difference in the spelling of Modern English "sleep" and "deal", from Anglian and .) thinks early Kentish had like West Saxon, whereas argue that Kentish originally had as in Anglian based on the development of the diphthong in the adverb .
*The West Saxon vowels / were caused by i-umlaut of long and short , , and did not appear in Anglian. Instead, i-umlaut of and rare are spelled , and i-umlaut of remains .
*Breaking of short to ''ea'' did not happen in Anglian before followed by a consonant; instead, the vowel was retracted to . When mutated by i-umlaut, it appears again as (vs. West Saxon ): Anglian ('cold') vs. West Saxon .
*The merger of and (long and short) occurred early in West Saxon but much later in Anglian.
*Many instances of diphthongs in Anglian, including the majority of those caused by breaking, were turned back into monophthongs again by the process of "Anglian smoothing", which occurred before , , , alone or preceded by or . That accounts for some of the most noticeable differences between standard (West Saxon) Old English and Modern English spelling: ('eye') became in Anglian; ('near') became Anglian and was later raised to in the transition to Middle English by the raising of before (hence in Modern English); ('nearest') become Anglian , shortened to in late Old English by vowel-shortening before three consonants (hence ''next'' in Modern English).

All dialects of Old English seem to have shared palatalization as a sound change, including Northumbrian. Forms in Modern English with hard and in which a palatalized sound would be expected from Old English appear to be influenced by Scandinavian.

Examples

The prologue to Beowulf:

The Lord's Prayer:

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Old English Phonology
English phonology
Phonology