Anglic sound changes

[bradrn]

This thread is intended as a central place to discuss, share and collate sound changes from Anglic languages, with a particular focus on Old/Middle/Modern Englishes at the moment.

I’ll start: as an example for my Brassica SCA, I have collected a bunch of sound changes from Middle English to the British–American split (~1700 CE), which can be viewed at https://github.com/bradrn/brassica/blob ... nglish.bsc. As mentioned in that file, the changes were taken from the Wikipedia article. I tried to be as complete as possible, but there are still a number of words which don’t seem to work — e.g. *suθ→*sɔːθ (should be saŭθ ‘south’), *freːnd→*friːnd (should be frend ‘friend’), *gruːnd→*grɔːnd (should be graŭnd ‘ground’) — so I’m sure I’m missing sound changes somewhere. (Then again, I don’t know much about this area, and those ‘wrong’ outcomes could well be the correct pronunciations for the 1700s — though I doubt it…)

[Znex]

*ū from Middle English to Modern English regularly resolves to /au/ after GVS, so maybe you're missing a few steps there. As for friend, there's a number of instances where *ē ī resolve to /ɛ/ particularly before *d, eg. bread, dead, lead, read. I think that change likely is included.

[bradrn]

*ū from Middle English to Modern English regularly resolves to /au/ after GVS, so maybe you're missing a few steps there.

On further investigation, it seems I do have ū→au, but then I have unconditional au→ɔː, which it seems I took from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_En ... thong_loss. Any ideas as to what’s going on there? I suspect I ordered the changes wrongly, but it’s hard to know.

As for friend, there's a number of instances where *ē ī resolve to /ɛ/ particularly before *d, eg. bread, dead, lead, read. I think that change likely is included.

I did include that change (L139), but as far as I can tell the Great Vowel Shift gets to the vowel first, shifting eː→iː. I’m sure I’m missing something here, but I can’t quite tell what it is…

[Znex]

*ū from Middle English to Modern English regularly resolves to /au/ after GVS, so maybe you're missing a few steps there.

On further investigation, it seems I do have ū→au, but then I have unconditional au→ɔː, which it seems I took from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_En ... thong_loss. Any ideas as to what’s going on there? I suspect I ordered the changes wrongly, but it’s hard to know.

Yep, that section seems to be referring to pre-existing diphthongs, not new diphthongs generated by GVS. For au→ɔː for instance, this is referring to ME au as spelt <aw> or <au>, eg. as in law or gaudy. Then /ai ɔu̯ ɛu̯ iu̯ ɔi̯ ui̯/ are each referring to words spelt with <ai/y>, <ou/w>, <eu/w>, <uCe>, <oi/y>, and <ui/y> (not sure about that last one).

As for friend, there's a number of instances where *ē ī resolve to /ɛ/ particularly before *d, eg. bread, dead, lead, read. I think that change likely is included.

I did include that change (L139), but as far as I can tell the Great Vowel Shift gets to the vowel first, shifting eː→iː. I’m sure I’m missing something here, but I can’t quite tell what it is…

I'm just reading here and it looks like the vowel shortening likely happened before GVS, seeing as both long and short variants of the same word seemed to have co-existed in Middle English. friend has the older spellings freend and frend, so I imagine this was originally /frɛ:nd/ in Middle English.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Yep, that section seems to be referring to pre-existing diphthongs, not new diphthongs generated by GVS. For au→ɔː for instance, this is referring to ME au as spelt <aw> or <au>, eg. as in law or gaudy. Then /ai ɔu̯ ɛu̯ iu̯ ɔi̯ ui̯/ are each referring to words spelt with <ai/y>, <ou/w>, <eu/w>, <uCe>, <oi/y>, and <ui/y> (not sure about that last one).

If I'm remembering right, Middle and Early Modern /ɔi̯ ui̯/, which have merged in both SSBE and GA, were both orthographically oi, oy; in some dialects, they underwent a chain shift to /ai ɔi/ (note that some varieties have a boil-bile merger).

[bradrn]

*ū from Middle English to Modern English regularly resolves to /au/ after GVS, so maybe you're missing a few steps there.

On further investigation, it seems I do have ū→au, but then I have unconditional au→ɔː, which it seems I took from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_En ... thong_loss. Any ideas as to what’s going on there? I suspect I ordered the changes wrongly, but it’s hard to know.

Yep, that section seems to be referring to pre-existing diphthongs, not new diphthongs generated by GVS. For au→ɔː for instance, this is referring to ME au as spelt <aw> or <au>, eg. as in law or gaudy. Then /ai ɔu̯ ɛu̯ iu̯ ɔi̯ ui̯/ are each referring to words spelt with <ai/y>, <ou/w>, <eu/w>, <uCe>, <oi/y>, and <ui/y> (not sure about that last one).

That makes a lot of sense. I’d better fix that bit…

As for friend, there's a number of instances where *ē ī resolve to /ɛ/ particularly before *d, eg. bread, dead, lead, read. I think that change likely is included.

I did include that change (L139), but as far as I can tell the Great Vowel Shift gets to the vowel first, shifting eː→iː. I’m sure I’m missing something here, but I can’t quite tell what it is…

I'm just reading here and it looks like the vowel shortening likely happened before GVS, seeing as both long and short variants of the same word seemed to have co-existed in Middle English. friend has the older spellings freend and frend, so I imagine this was originally /frɛ:nd/ in Middle English.

I see… any ideas as to why the other article put it in a completely different place, then?

[Znex]

I see… any ideas as to why the other article put it in a completely different place, then?

Don't ask me. But that's why if you're not sure, you want to find multiple pages and examples of sound changes to corroborate any particular sound change.

If sound changes happen in any particular order, it's not too hard to figure out by comparing examples and seeing what words are affected by some change and not others. And there's plenty of information out there to compare, especially considering it's English we're talking about here.

[Travis B.]

I did include that change (L139), but as far as I can tell the Great Vowel Shift gets to the vowel first, shifting eː→iː. I’m sure I’m missing something here, but I can’t quite tell what it is…

I'm just reading here and it looks like the vowel shortening likely happened before GVS, seeing as both long and short variants of the same word seemed to have co-existed in Middle English. friend has the older spellings freend and frend, so I imagine this was originally /frɛ:nd/ in Middle English.

I see… any ideas as to why the other article put it in a completely different place, then?

It seems to me that there were sporadic shortenings, particularly before alveolar/dental consonants all the way from Middle English through the close of the Early Modern English period.

[bradrn]

I'm just reading here and it looks like the vowel shortening likely happened before GVS, seeing as both long and short variants of the same word seemed to have co-existed in Middle English. friend has the older spellings freend and frend, so I imagine this was originally /frɛ:nd/ in Middle English.

I see… any ideas as to why the other article put it in a completely different place, then?

It seems to me that there were sporadic shortenings, particularly before alveolar/dental consonants all the way from Middle English through the close of the Early Modern English period.

In that case, do you have any further details on precisely how these shortenings occurred?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

In that case, do you have any further details on precisely how these shortenings occurred?

They unfortunately seem to have been sporadic, and probably dialectal. Note bread, dead would be expected to be homophones of breed, deed. I imagine a dialectal form with shortening supplanted the expected one to keep them distinct (but not always, note the meet-meat merger, which affects a pair of very common words). Inherited [oː] > [uː] > [ʊ] before terminal /k/ does seem to be quite regular; note book, brook, cook, took, look, rook, forsook, crook, nook (to the point that I would say /ʊk/ is the default pronunciation of ook). other words with ook for /uːk/ are usually originally slang or borrowings (/uːk/ was also restored by the collapse of /(yː) iu eu/ into /juː/, with yod-dropping just after /l r/, if I'm remembering right). Other shortening before velars doesn't seem to be nearly so regular, since creak, wreak, leak, and steak, break all survive, also take, cake, smoke, broke, pike, spike, like. Also note that historical */auk/ derived from an earlier /uːk/ does not seem to occur in native words (though I imagine some people pronounce /alk/ in this way now).

[bradrn]

Thanks to everyone’s pointers, and with a great deal of staring at my SCA, I’ve managed to fix most of the problems in the linked sound change file. Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the Wikipedia articles I’ve been working from are (as usual) quite unreliable in parts — e.g.:

• The ‘loss of most remaining diphthongs’ section which confused me so much turned out to be a conflation of two sets of changes, with some occurring before the Great Vowel Shift, and others afterwards. I’m pretty sure there’s some diphthongs missing from that section, too.
• The phonemes resulting from ME /ɔu/ and /uː/ are transcribed very inconsistently, to the extent that the article seems to indicate a merger between the two in EME (which is obviously not the case)
• The table at the end of the Wikipedia article shows an apparently regular change /woː/→/wuː/→/uː/ (seen in /twoː/→/tuː/ ‘two’), which is nowhere else to be found in the article.
• The sporadic shortenings mentioned by Rounin Ryuuji likewise appear to be mentioned nowhere in the article (unless you count the single table row titled ‘ME unexpected (?) vowel changes’, which I don’t).

And this isn’t even including anything from the past 300 years — or the entirety of Old English!

So: given that Wikipedia doesn’t seem to be anything close to a useful source for this, does anyone else happen to know of any recommendations? I’m very unfamiliar with the relevant literature…

[Man in Space]

So: given that Wikipedia doesn’t seem to be anything close to a useful source for this, does anyone else happen to know of any recommendations? I’m very unfamiliar with the relevant literature…

Yes, one of the sources I cited in the Index is a public-domain text on the history of English with differentiations for the different dialects that developed out of OE, including the ones that atrophied, and it has MidE too. Can’t recall the name offhand but I’ll check this evening.

[bradrn]

So: given that Wikipedia doesn’t seem to be anything close to a useful source for this, does anyone else happen to know of any recommendations? I’m very unfamiliar with the relevant literature…

Yes, one of the sources I cited in the Index is a public-domain text on the history of English with differentiations for the different dialects that developed out of OE, including the ones that atrophied, and it has MidE too. Can’t recall the name offhand but I’ll check this evening.

Any updates on this, by any chance?

[Man in Space]

So: given that Wikipedia doesn’t seem to be anything close to a useful source for this, does anyone else happen to know of any recommendations? I’m very unfamiliar with the relevant literature…

Yes, one of the sources I cited in the Index is a public-domain text on the history of English with differentiations for the different dialects that developed out of OE, including the ones that atrophied, and it has MidE too. Can’t recall the name offhand but I’ll check this evening.

Any updates on this, by any chance?

Yes, sorry, I completely forgot: Moore, Samuel (1919), Historical Outlines of English Phonology and Middle English Grammar for Courses in Chaucer, Middle English, and the History of the English Language.

[bradrn]

Yes, one of the sources I cited in the Index is a public-domain text on the history of English with differentiations for the different dialects that developed out of OE, including the ones that atrophied, and it has MidE too. Can’t recall the name offhand but I’ll check this evening.

Any updates on this, by any chance?

Yes, sorry, I completely forgot: Moore, Samuel (1919), Historical Outlines of English Phonology and Middle English Grammar for Courses in Chaucer, Middle English, and the History of the English Language.

Ah, thanks! I’m surprised at the date, though… surely there’s a more up-to-date resource somewhere? (That one doesn’t even seem to use IPA.)

[Man in Space]

Ah, thanks! I’m surprised at the date, though… surely there’s a more up-to-date resource somewhere? (That one doesn’t even seem to use IPA.)

There’re bound to be some, but this was when I was an undergrad and had zero dollars and I had to make do with what I could get my hands on. Moore had the advantages of being relatively easy to parse and presenting information on the routes that other dialects (Kentish, Northumbrian, &c.) took.

[Richard W]

It seems to me that there were sporadic shortenings, particularly before alveolar/dental consonants all the way from Middle English through the close of the Early Modern English period.

Have they stopped? I have the unusual /tʊθ/ for /tuːθ/ ‘tooth’, though in my younger days it was /tʊf/.

May favourite examples of the vagaries of shortening is 'food' v. 'good' v. 'blood' and 'leading' riming with 'reading' v. 'leading' rhyming with 'Reading'. (The second verb is derived from the noun 'lead' rhyming with 'head', so perhaps you don't need to worry about it.)

[Richard W]

If I'm remembering right, Middle and Early Modern /ɔi̯ ui̯/, which have merged in both SSBE and GA, were both orthographically oi, oy; in some dialects, they underwent a chain shift to /ai ɔi/ (note that some varieties have a boil-bile merger).

My understanding is that all surviving dialects had a boil-bile merger, but there was then an orthographically conditioned split. (English is bedevilled by literacy.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

If I'm remembering right, Middle and Early Modern /ɔi̯ ui̯/, which have merged in both SSBE and GA, were both orthographically oi, oy; in some dialects, they underwent a chain shift to /ai ɔi/ (note that some varieties have a boil-bile merger).

My understanding is that all surviving dialects had a boil-bile merger, but there was then an orthographically conditioned split. (English is bedevilled by literacy.)

Is that really possible?

[Richard W]

My understanding is that all surviving dialects had a boil-bile merger, but there was then an orthographically conditioned split. (English is bedevilled by literacy.)

Is that really possible?

Yes. Look at all the common words that have spelling pronunciations. As a result of an 'o' in the spelling, one, won, none, ]trouble and wonder all have variously extensive and deprecated pronunciations with [ɒ]. /h/ has largely been restored in words of Latin origin (it's a fight to keep it out of heir and hour), and there are many Americans who resurrect /l/ in calm and walk.