Palatal Diphthongisation

The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions.

For historical developments prior to the Old English period, see Proto-Germanic language.

Phonetic transcription

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 ''italics'' 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 (, , , , , , , , ).
*Forms between /slashes/ or racketsindicate, respectively, broad (phonemic) or narrow (allophonic) pronunciation. Sounds are indicated using standard IPA notation.

The following table indicates the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. For details of the relevant sound systems, see Proto-Germanic phonology and Old English phonology.

¹Proto-Germanic had two allophones each: stops and fricatives . The stops occurred:
#following a nasal;
#when geminated;
#word-initially, for and only;
#following , for only.
By West Germanic times, was pronounced as a stop in all positions. The fricative allophones are sometimes indicated in reconstructed forms to make it easier to understand the development of Old English consonants. Old English retained the allophony , which in case of palatalisation (see below) became . Later, non-palatalized became word-initially. The allophony was broken when merged with , the voiced allophone of .

Phonological processes

A number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. The processes affected especially vowels and are the reason that many Old English words look significantly different from related words in languages such as Old High German, which is much closer to the common West Germanic ancestor of both languages. The processes took place chronologically in roughly the order described below (with uncertainty in ordering as noted).

Absorption of nasals before fricatives

This is the source of such alternations as modern English ''five'', ''mouth'', ''us'' versus German , , . For detail see Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.

First a-fronting

The Anglo-Frisian languages underwent a sound change in their development from Proto-West-Germanic by which , unless followed by or nasalized, was fronted to . This was similar to the later process affecting short , which is known as Anglo-Frisian brightening or First Fronting (see below). Nasalized ''ą̄'' and the sequences ''ān'', ''ām'' were unaffected and were later raised to ''ǭ'', ''ōn'', ''ōm'' (see below). (This may be taken to imply that a nasal consonant ''n'', ''m'' caused a preceding long vowel to nasalise.) In the non-West-Saxon dialects of English (including the Anglian dialect underlying Modern English) the fronted vowel was further raised to ''ē'' : W.S. , (< Proto-West-Germanic < Proto-Germanic ) versus Anglian , . The Modern English descendants ''sleep'' and ''sheep'' reflect the Anglian vowel; the West Saxon words would have developed to ''*sleap'', ''*sheap''.

The vowel affected by this change, which is reconstructed as being a low back vowel ''ā'' in Proto-West-Germanic, was the reflex of Proto-Germanic . It is possible that in Anglo-Frisian, Proto-Germanic simply remained a front vowel, developing to Old English ''ǣ'' or ''ē'' without ever passing through an intermediate stage as the back vowel . However, borrowings such as Old English from Latin and the backing to ''ō'' before nasals are much easier to explain under the assumption of a common West Germanic stage ''*ā''.

Monophthongization

Proto-Germanic was monophthongized ( smoothed) to (). This occurred after first a-fronting. For example, Proto-Germanic * became Old English (modern ''stone'') (cf. Old Frisian vs. Gothic , Old High German ). In many cases, the resulting was later fronted to by i-mutation: "to divide" (cf. Old Frisian vs. Gothic , Old High German odern English ''deal''.

It is possible that this monophthongization occurred via the height harmonisation that produced the other diphthongs in Old English (presumably through an intermediate stage: > > ).

A similar sound change has occurred in Southern American English and African-American Vernacular English.

Second a-fronting

The second part of a-fronting, called Anglo-Frisian brightening or First Fronting, is very similar to the first part except that it affects short ''a'' instead of long ''ā''. Here ''a'' is fronted to ''æ'' unless followed by or nasalized, the same conditions as applied in the first part.

Importantly, a-fronting was blocked by ''n, m'' only in stressed syllables, not unstressed syllables, which accounts for forms like (formerly ) "given" from Proto-Germanic . However, the infinitive retains its back vowel due to ''a''-restoration (see the explanation given in that section for the similar case of vs. ).

Diphthong height harmonisation

Proto-Germanic had the closing diphthongs (and , an allophone of when an or followed in the next syllable). In Old English, these (except , which had been monophthongised, as noted above) developed into diphthongs of a generally less common type in which both elements are of the same height, called height-harmonic diphthongs. This process is called diphthong height harmonisation. Specifically:
* underwent a-fronting to and was then harmonised to , spelled (or in modern texts ).
* was harmonised to , spelled (or in modern texts ).
* was already harmonic; it became a separate phoneme , spelled (or in modern texts ). (This interpretation is somewhat controversial; see below.)

Old English diphthongs also arose from other later processes, such as breaking, palatal diphthongisation, back mutation and i-mutation, which also gave an additional diphthong ''ie'' . The diphthongs could occur both short (monotonic) and long .

Some sources reconstruct other phonetic forms that are not height-harmonic for some or all of these Old English diphthongs. The first elements of ''ēa'', ''ēo'', ''īo'' are generally accepted to have had the qualities , , (evidence for these qualities comes from the behaviour of breaking and back mutation as described below; the Middle English development of short ''ea'' into could also provide some evidence for the phonetic realisation of ''ēa''). However, the interpretations of the second elements of these diphthongs are more varied. There are analyses that treat all of these diphthongs as ending in a schwa sound ; i.e. ''ēa'', ''ēo'', ''īo'' = . For ''io'' and ''ie'', the height-harmonic interpretations and are controversial, with many (especially more traditional) sources assuming that the pronunciation matched the spelling (, ), and hence that these diphthongs were of the opening rather than the height-harmonic type. In Early West Saxon, and later in Anglian ''io'' (both long and short) merged with ''eo''.

Breaking and retraction

Vowel breaking in Old English is the diphthongization of the short front vowels to short diphthongs when followed by , or by or plus another consonant. Long similarly broke to , but only when followed by . The geminates ''rr'' and ''ll'' usually count as ''r'' or ''l'' plus another consonant, but breaking does not occur before ''ll'' produced by West Germanic gemination (the or in the following syllable prevents breaking).

were lowered to in Early West Saxon and late Anglian (see above).

The exact conditions for breaking vary somewhat depending on the sound being broken:

*Short breaks before ''h, rC, lC'', where C is any consonant.
*Short breaks before ''h, rC, lh, lc, w'', i.e. compared to it is also broken before ''w'', but is broken before ''l'' only in the combination ''lh'' and sometimes ''lc''.
*Short breaks before ''h, rC, w''. However, it does not break before ''wi'', and in the Anglian dialects breaking before ''rCi'' happens only in the combination ''*rzi'' (e.g. Anglian "anger" from but from ).
*Long ''ī'' and ''ǣ'' break only before ''h''.

Examples:
* "to throw" <
* "threw (sing.)" <
* "money" <
* "fought (sing.)" <
* "helped (sing.)" < (but no breaking in "to help" because the consonant after is not )
* "far" <
* "to fall" < (but < earlier is not broken because of the following )
* "elk" <
* "to learn" < earlier
* "near" (cf. "nigh") <
* "to lend" < < <

The i-mutation of broken (whether long or short) is spelled (possibly , see above).

Examples:
* "turns" ( intr.) < + i-mutation < + breaking < Proto-Germanic < early Proto-Germanic
* "to turn" ( tr.) < + i-mutation < + breaking < + a-fronting < Proto-Germanic
* "nearest" (cf. "next") < + i-mutation < + breaking < + a-fronting < Proto-Germanic
* "to lighten" < + i-mutation < + breaking < Proto-Germanic

Note that in some dialects was backed ( retracted) to () 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 appears as Modern English "cold" (actually from Anglian Old English ) rather than "" (the expected result of ).

Breaking and retraction commonly explained in terms of assimilation of the vowel to a following velar consonant. While is in fact a velar consonant, , , and are less obviously so. It is therefore assumed that, at least at the time of the occurrence of breaking and retraction (several hundred years before recorded Old English), was pronounced or similar – at least when following a vowel – and and before a consonant had a velar or retroflex quality and were already pronounced and , or similar.

disputes the common assumption that postvocalic must have been pronounced as velar at the time of vowel breaking. He argues that this is problematic regardless of which order is assumed for the sound changes of velar palatalization and breaking: if breaking occurred before palatalization and was triggered by , there is no clear explanation for why vowels did not break before the other velar consonants (from Proto-Germanic and ), whereas if breaking occurred after palatalization, there is no clear explanation for why was still velar after front vowels, when the other velar consonants had become palatalized in this position. Howell proposes instead that prior to Old English, was originally weakened to in all positions (which he argues is supported by its loss between vowels), and that this became strengthened to in the syllable coda later on, perhaps at the time when it merged phonemically with the devoiced outcome of former .

A-restoration

After breaking occurred, short (and in some dialects long as well) was backed to () when there was a back vowel in the following syllable. This is called ''a-restoration'', because it partly restored original , which had earlier been fronted to (see above). (Note: The situation is complicated somewhat by a later change called second fronting, but this did not affect the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English.)

Because strong masculine and neuter nouns have back vowels in plural endings, alternations with in the singular vs. 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" < *.

Breaking (see above) occurred between a-fronting and a-restoration. This order is necessary to account for words like "to slay" (pronounced ) from original *''slahan'': > (a-fronting) > (breaking; inhibits a-restoration) > (h-loss) > (vowel coalescence, compensatory lengthening).

A-restoration interacted in a tricky fashion with a-fronting (Anglo-Frisian brightening) to produce e.g. "to go" from Proto-Germanic but "gone" from Proto-Germanic . Basically:

Note that the key difference is in steps 3 and 4, where nasalised ''ą'' 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. The presence of back ''a'' in the stem of both forms is not directly explainable by sound change, and appears to have been the result of simple analogical levelling.

Palatalization

Palatalization of the velar consonants and occurred in certain environments, mostly involving front vowels. (The phoneme at that time had two allophones: after or when geminated, and everywhere else.) This palatalisation is similar to what occurred in Italian and Swedish. When palatalised:
* became
* became
* became
* became (a voiced palatal fricative; it would later become but not before the loss of older in certain positions discussed below)

The contexts for palatalisation were sometimes different for different sounds:
*Before , for example:
** ("to chide"), ("books", from earlier ), ("seek", from earlier ) ()
** ("bridge", from earlier West Germanic after Proto-Germanic ) ()
** ("gives") ()
*Before other front vowels and diphthongs, in the case of word-initial and all , for example:
** ("churl"), ("chose (sg.)"), ("cold") (initial )
** ("gave"), ("yard") ()
*After (possibly with an intervening /n/), unless a back vowel followed, for example:
** ("I"), ("ditch, dike") ()
**In ("week"), the is not affected due to the following
*For and only, after other front vowels (), unless a back vowel followed, for example:
** ("way"), ("nail"), ("relative") ()
** ("fish") ()
**In ("ways") the is not affected due to the following
**In ("ask", from earlier ) the remains due to the ''*ō''.
*For word-initial , always, even when followed by a back vowel or , for example:
** ("ship"), ("shoulder"), ("short"), ("dress", giving modern ''shroud'') ()

The palatals and reverted to their non-palatal equivalents and when they came to stand immediately before a consonant, even if this occurred at a significantly later period, as when * ("seeks") became , and * ("singes") became .

Palatalization occurred after a-restoration and before i-mutation (although it is unclear whether it occurred before or after h-loss). Thus, it did not occur in "to sing" (cf. modern English ''regale''), with the first backed from due to a-restoration. Similarly, palatalisation occurred in ("day"), but not in a-restored ("days"; cf. dialectal English ''dawes'' "days") or in ("dawn", where the represents the reflex of unpalatalised ). Nor did it occur in ("king"), ("to comb") or ("geese"), where the front vowels developed from earlier due to i-mutation.

In many instances where a , , or 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 "he seeks" has replaced the palatal of "to seek" in Modern English; on the other hand, the palatalised forms of have replaced the velar forms, giving modern ''beseech''.

The sounds and had almost certainly split into distinct phonemes by Late West Saxon, the dialect in which the majority of Old English documents are written. This is suggested by such near-minimal pairs as ("drink") vs. ("drench"), and ("geese") vs. ("you"). Nevertheless, there are few true minimal pairs, and velars and palatals often alternate with each other in ways reminiscent of allophones, for example:
* ("to choose") vs. ("chose", plural form)
* ("to pour") vs. ("poured", plural form)
The voiced velars and were still allophones of a single phoneme (although by now was the form used in initial position); similarly, their respective palatalised reflexes and are analysed as allophones of a single phoneme at this stage. This also included older instances of which derived from Proto-Germanic , and could stand before back vowels, as in ("young"; from PGmc ) and ("yoke"; from PGmc ). (See also Old English phonology: dorsal consonants.)

Standard Old English spelling did not reflect the split, and used the same letter for both and , and for both () and (). In the standard modernised orthography (as used here), the velar and palatal variants are distinguished with a diacritic: stands for , for , for and , and for and . The geminates of these are written , , , .

Loanwords from Old Norse typically do not display any palatalisation, showing that at the time they were borrowed the palatal–velar distinction was no longer allophonic and the two sets were now separate phonemes. Compare, for example, the modern doublet