‘Substratum’ Theory of the Great Vowel Shift by Otto Jespersen

 Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) – he was the first person to study the Great Vowel Shift; and
first coined the term Great Vowel Shift
 mid 14th century and mid 17th century – this is when the GVS first took place
 Great Vowel Shift/ GVS – this was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of
the English language

Evolution…
i. The evolution of the Great Vowel Shift is the way of pronouncing long vowels, marks
the main difference between the pronunciation of the middle English and modern
English.
ii. 16th century – the system of vowels is simplified to around 15 vowels and different
diphthongs

Overall Changes…
i. The main difference in pronunciation of middle English in the year 1400 and the modern
English is the value of the long vowels

 The great vowel shift or gvs is still continuing up to this date in regional dialects, there
are theories for why the great vowel shift happened, but none are like to be ever be
testable without a time machine

a. Pull theory – upper vowels moved first and pulled the lower ones
along
 b. Push theory – lower vowels moved forward and up, pushing the
others ahead
 Not all words suffered the changes like perhaps the sequence “ea” mostly changed their
sound [e:] to [I:] ; such as READ (ri:d) or DEAR /di:r/

a. Other examples: great /greit/

break /breik/
steak /steik/
head /hed/

Ancedote relating to the Great Vowel Shift:

Boy in the North-East England is sitting by a river, crying.

Passer by asks (him) what’s up.
Boy says ‘My mate fell in the water’
‘Oh that’s terrible, how did it happen?’
‘Fell right out of my sandwich, into the water!’

 Substratum theory – this is when a group of people adopt a new language that they are
likely to carry habits of pronounciation of old English to modern/new English

 Since the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) did not occur in other languages or in some regional
dialects of English, it is the standard English speakers and not the speakers of other
languages who have whacky vowels.