The Great Vowel Shift, splits, simplifications and new arrivals

The Great Vowel Shift:

http://eweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/seehear.htm
https://www.uni-due.de/SHE/SHE_Phonology.htm

English vowel chart

What are the PdE reflexes of the following ME words phonetically transcribed?

The Great Vowel Shift is a series of at least partially related (?) sound changes which affected the
Middle English long vowels

The first innovating spellings reflecting the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift can be found in
the East Midlands in the 14th century (Lass 1999). The vowels /i:/, /u:/, /e:/, and /o:/ finished
raising by around 1500; the rest of the long vowels shifted later. By about 1650 the Great
Vowel Shift was over. These facts as well as the ontological status of the GVS have been now
questioned by Gjertrud Stendbrenden (see Stenbrenden 2003, forthcoming 2016).1
How did the GVS start?
There are two major positions on the trigger of the Great Vowel Shift. For
Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), the Great Vowel Shift was a drag chain. It
started with the diphthongization of /i:/ and /u:/ to // and // respectively. At
the next stage, /e:/ and /o:/ were dragged upwards to fill the notional vowel
space vacated by the diphthongization. Finally, the remaining three long
vowels /:/, /:/ and /a:/ were raised.

1 Gjertrud F. Stenbrenden. (2003). On the Interpretation of Early Evidence for ME Vowel-Change, In B. J. Blake
& K. Burridge (ed.), Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on
Historical Linguistics, Melbourne 13-17 August 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 403 415. Gjertrud
F. Stenbrenden (forthcoming 2016). Long Vowel Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Drag chain: stage 1

Drag chain: stage 2

For Karl Luick (1921-1940): Viennese scholar. He established English

historical linguistics on the continent. His main contribution is his
Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (1914-1940)
He argued that he Great Vowel Shift was a push chain. The trigger of
the change was the raising of the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/. On their way
upwards they evicted /i:/ and /u:/ from their slots. This was then
followed by a drag of lower vowels upwards. There is no strong textual
or orthographical evidence to reject either of the positions.
Actually, there is evidence. Gjertrud F. Stenbrenden (University of Oslo) has shown that there
is evidence that the raising of the close-mid vowels and the close vowels were
simultaneous, which is why the close vowels did not have to diphthongise in order to

avoid merger. The only thing we can say (in hindsight) is that, as a matter of fact, the reflexes
of the close vowels and the close-mid vowels did not merge. Therefore, if the close-mid
vowels were raising by the second half of the thirteenth century (much earlier than it had
been pearlier believed), then the close vowels must have started to diphthongise too.
Otherwise, there would have been merger, which we know didn't happen. But the
argument has to be from logic (post facto), rather than saying that any of the individual vowelshift changes *had* to take place, as Luick and Jespersen (or earlier Lass) said.

Push chain: stage 1

Push chain: stage 2

Caveat
The GVS is a diagrammatic summary of two temporally extended processes:

1)

Early raising of the mid-close (or mid-high) vowels with diphthongization of the close
ones and later raising of the mid-open and low vowels.

2)

A second raising of ME /:/ leads to merger with /e:/, hence modern English /i:/(which
took place earlier, in the 15th c., the northern dialects), but since this does not go to completion,
it also leads to a split in ME /:/, which produces some merger with ME /a:/, and later with
ME /ai/. Examples: the stressed vowels of name, take, cake (from ME /a:/) merged with those of
break, steik, great (from ME /:/).
They may be the results of the coming together over time of two processes that have no
particular conceptual relation: Apparent historical patternedness and directionality are
typically accidental Lass (2006)2

Looking at the outcome of the Great Vowel Shift we can see that words like meet and meat had
distinct qualities in Early Modern English. Their vowels only merged around 1700 as the half-close
2 See also: http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1456&context=pwpl

(mid-high) vowel /e:/ deriving from /:/ was raised to /i:/ in southern dialects. This vowel coalescence
is often called the meet-meat merger. It increased the number of /i:/ words, including please and
speak listed, and created homophones such as see and sea, beet and beat, tea and tee, piece and
peace: Words that had ME [e:] are usually spelled with <ee>, <eCe> or <ie>; those that had had ME
[:] with <ea>].
But in the latter half of the seventeenth century John Dryden and others could also rhyme speak and
make. The mid-low (half-open) /:/ in make [from the raising and fronting of a:] and similar words
had become higher, and could coincide with /e:/ words such as meat, sea and speak, which had not
yet been raised to /i:/. Rhymes like this did not persist, however, as the high-mid (half-close) /e:/ in the
make-words did not continue to raise. It gave way to /ei/ in the southern mainstream dialect at the end
of the 18th century. A parallel process of diphthongisation was undergone by /o:/ in words like boat
and home.
In some words the vowel /:/was shortened to a short [] and so missed out on the GVS (which
affected only long vowels): bread, dead, dread, head, lead (the noun), red, shred, spread,
thread, tread, fret, let, sweat, threat, breath, and death.
A few /:/words conserved a tendency to keep the two long es distinct they fall in with the
development of ME

/a:/ - [a: >:>: > e: > ei], giving rise to homophone pairs in PdE like

great:grate, steak:stake, break:brake, but these are relics. Rhymes such as

Here Thou, great Anna! Whom three Realms obey
Dost sometimes Counsel take and sometimes Tea
(Pope Rape of the Lock)
And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,
And now her sobs do her intendments break
Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis)
were still possible, for some speakers at least, as late as the early 18th century.
Also following the path of ME /a:/ by the end of the 17th century were words that had had the
diphthong /ai/ in Middle English (monophthongised to []). So

made:maid

MonSmoothing of diphthongs
Late ME

EModE

iu

ju:

eu

ju:

ai

e:

Examples
chew,

due,

hue,

June,

new, true
beauty, dew, few, hew,
newt
all, cause,

chalk,

law,

taught
bait, day, may, tail, way

The ME/ai/ occurred in words like day, bait, eight, may, tail and

way. It became the monophthong /:/, later /e:/ So it fell in with what had been /a:/ in ME,
which had raised to /:/. This merger created many homophone pairs (e.g., days/ daze,
bait/ bate, hail/hale, raise/raze, tail/tale and waive/wave). In late ModE, /e:/
> /ei/.

ME /a/ smoothed to eModE/:/ in the first half of the 17th c.

Two Middle English diphthongs, /iu/ and /eu/, coalesced in Early Modern English and

became /ju:/. Most /iu/ words such as due, hue, new and true acquired the pronunciation
/ju:/ in the early 17th c.

The /eu/ diphthong (in dew, few, hew etc.) first moved to the position of /iu/, and

then ended up /ju:/. In the early 18th c. the /j/ in /ju:/ began to be lost, hence the /u:/ in many
words such as brew, chew, crew and threw today. The change from /ju:/ to /u:/ (yoddropping) has not been completed (yet).

Splits

By the mid-seventeenth century /a/ had moved up to //, where it has remained, and

was present in words such as castle, past, bath, last, master, path but the vowel
in these and similar words was lengthened in the south and backed to /a:/. This didnt take
place in the north of England (or in American Engish).

The north-south divide is also signalled by another purely southern

developement the lowering and unrounding of // into // as in cut, dull, fun, luck,
mud etc. It continued to be used in words like bull, pull, bush, full, put and wolf. It
came about when the /u:/ that came from /o:/ in the GVS shortened to //, hence book,
foot, good, look. The split preserved the distinction between pairs like book/buck and

look/luck. If u: <oo> shortened early then it went to // like blood and flood, if it shortened
later , to //like brook, hook, stood, took, wood.

Consonants: Simplifcations and new arrivals

// and /x/ <gh> fall silent mainly, but in some cases which? survive as /f/.

bough

night

slough

cough

bought

ought

thigh

dough

bright

plough

thought

drought

brought

rough

tough

enough

chough

sigh

trough

light

[g] and [k] in [gn] and kn] are lost

gnat gnash gnaw gnarl gnostic gnomic

knave knot knife knee knell know knead knit knock

[b] in [mb] cluster is lost

dumb climb thumb numb lamb comb bomb womb tomb plumb

[w] lost in C+w+rounded back vowel(e.g. two sword [but not in swore] ) and w+r

Initial [h] unstable and often dropped in pronunciation. Remodelling restored the [h] to

originally h-less French loans (e.g. erbe, umble, abit) which encouraged /h/ pronunciations. [hw]
simplifies to [w] so wail/whale, wine/whine, witch/which, weather/whether, now
homophones

Voiced velar stop [g] dropped after velar nasal in [g] giving phonemic status to //: sin [sin]

versus sing [si],

ran vs rang

h) Assibilation (coalescense)
Alveolar sounds + [j] > fricative or affricate

sj>

zj>

tj>

dj>

mission

vision

stew

dew

vicious

measure

tune

duke

social

pleasure

future

dune

nation

decision

Christian

immediately

pension

cohesion

fortune

educate

mansion

disclosure

digestion

graduate

ratio etc

casual etc

creature etc

soldier

The new phoneme also appears word-final position: entourage, sabotage, beige
rouge, garage