Great Vowel Shift

English vowel chart:

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).
How did the GVS start?
There are two major positions on the trigger of the Great Vowel Shift. For Otto
Jespersen (1860-1943), it was a drag chain. It started with the diphtongization of /i:/ and
/u:/ to /əɪ/ and /əʊ/ respectively. At the next stage, /e:/ and /o:/ were dragged upwards to
fill the notional vowelspace vacated by the diphthongization. Finally, the remaining
three long vowels /ɛ:/, /ɔ:/ and /a:/ were raised.

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 vowel-shift 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 /ɛ:/ 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 /ɛ:/, 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 /ɛ:/).

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).
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 (mid-high) vowel /e:/ deriving from /ε:/ 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 [ε:]
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) /ε:/ 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 /ε:/was shortened to a short [ε] 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 /ε:/words conserved a tendency to keep the two long e‟s distinct – they fall in
with the development of ME /a:/ - [a: >æ:>ε: > 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‟)
….or
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 [ε]).

Smoothing of diphthongs
Late ME EModE Examples
iu → ju: chew, due, hue, June, new, true
eu → ju: beauty, dew, few, hew, newt
aʊ → ɔ: all, cause, chalk, law, taught
ai → e: bait, day, may, tail, way

 The ME/ai/ occurred in words like day, bait, eight, may, tail and way. It became
the monophthong /ɛ:/, later /e:/ So it fell in with what had been /a:/ in ME, which
had raised to /ɛ:/. 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 /aʊ/ smoothed to eModE/ɔ:/ 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:/ (yod-dropping) has not been completed (yet).

Splits

 By the mid-seventeenth century /a/ had moved up to /æ/, 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 didn‟t 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 /ʊ/ into /ʌ/ 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
/ʌ/, 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 /ʌ/
like blood and flood, if it shortened later , to /ʊ/like brook, hook, stood, took,
wood.
Consonants:

1. Simplifcations and new arrivals

 / / and /x/ <gh> fall silent mainly, ut in some cases – which? – survive as /f/.
e.g. bough / bought / bright / brought / chough
knave / knot / knife / knee / knell / know / knead / knit / knock
night / ought / plough / rough / sigh
slough / thigh / thought / tough / trough
cough / dough / drought / enough / light

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

e.g. gnaw / gnarl / gnostic / gnomic
knave / knot / knife / knee / knell / know / knead / knit / knock

 [b] in [mb] cluster is lost.

e.g. dumb / climb / thumb / numb / lamb / comb / bomb / womb / tomb / plumb

 [w] lost in c + w +rounded back vowel 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 [ŋg] giving phonemic status to
/ŋ/: sin [sin] versus sing [siŋ], ran vs rang

2. Assibilation (coalescense)
Alveolar sounds + [j] > fricative or affricate
sj> mission / vicious / social / nation / pension / mansion / ratio
zj> vision / measure / pleasure / decision / cohesion / disclosure / casual
tj> stew / tune / future / Christian / fortune / digestion / creature
dj> dew / duke / dune / immediately / educate / graduate / soldier

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