Analysis Of The Great Vowel Shift

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The Great Vowel Shift
Changes in the Phonological Realization of the Middle English Long Vowels, Exemplified Through the Developments of /iː'/, /ɛː'/ and /aː'/

The discrepancy between English spelling and pronunciation in heterophonous pairs like crime - criminal, clean – cleanliness, or sane - sanity (Gelderen 2014: 22) is not only an obstacle to English language acquisition but also a relict of a historical change in phonology, the Great Vowel Shift (GVS). Occurring in the phonological realization of the Middle English (ME) long vowels, the shifting process approximately started during the decline of ME, around 1400, and continued throughout the entire period of Early Modern English, coming to an end in about 1700 (2014: 115, 159). The following paper will depict and exemplify the changes that have …show more content…

Similar to other European languages, the original phonology of most early ME vowels and consonants matched their writing (Baugh & Cable 2002: 238). However, during the GVS the long monophthongs were gradually raised in their position through “[...] a greater elevation of the tongue and closing of the mouth [...]” (2002: 238), while the short vowels stayed widely unaffected (Gelderen 2014: 18). In two stages, separated by decades, /iː'/, /eː'/, /ɛː'/, /aː'/, /uː'/, /oː'/ and /ɔː'/ were shifted (Nevalainen & Traugott 2012: 758). According to Lass, this process was initiated by the upper-mid vowels /eː'/, in the front, and /oː'/, in the back, which pushed up to the positions of today's /iː/ and /uː/. Subsequently, the ME high vowels /iː'/ and /uː'/ became /ai/ and /ou/ (2012: 249), since they could not be raised any higher. In the second stage, the lower-mid vowels /ɛː'/ and /ɔː'/ took the places of the upper-mid vowels /eː/ and /oː/, while the low vowel /aː'/ pushed up towards /ɛː/ (2012: 80) to finally become today's /eɪ/ (2012:

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