Seminar4.1. OLD ENGLISH PHONOLOGY.

THE VOWEL CHANGES

Aims:
 be able to identify the vocalic sound changes that took place in Old
English: breaking, palatal mutation, back mutation, contraction,
diphthongization after palatal consonants that affected the evolution of
vowels;

4.1. Study points:

1. The system of vowels/consonants in Old English.

2. The assimilative processes in the vocalic system:
2.1. Breaking (fracture)
2.2. Palatal mutation (i-umlaut)
2.3. Back or velar mutation
2.4. Diphthongization after palatal consonants
2.5 Lengthening of vowels before the clusters nd, ld, mb

Recommended Literature
Obligatory:
 Albert C.Baugh and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. –
London: Routledge, 2002. – P. 47–50.
 David Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. –
Cambridge, 1994. – P. 16–19.
 Elly van Gelderen. A History of the English Language. – Amsterdam/
Philadelphia, 2006. – P. 13–23.
 Valery V. Mykhailenko. Paradigmatics in the evolution of English. –
Chernivtsi, 1999. – P. 22–25; 30–35.
 T.A. Rastorguyeva. A History of English. – Moscow, 1983. – P. 71–92.
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 L.Verba. History of the English language. – Vinnitsa, 2004. – P. 30–38.
Additional:
 В.Д. Аракин. История английского языка. – М., 1985. – C. 31–45.
 И.П. Иванова, Л.П. Чахоян, Т.М. Беляева. История английского языка.
Учебник. Хрестоматия. Словарь. ⁄ – СПб.: Издательство «Лань», 2001. –
С. 53–68.

4.2. Tests: review of theory

I. True /False: Write ‘T’ for true or ‘F’ for false beside each of the following
statement.
1. The system of writing in Old English was changed with the introduction of
Christianity.
2. Runes are the 24 letters of an ancient Latin alphabet.
3. The oldest surviving texts in the English language written with Latin letters date
back to 55-54 B.C.
4. The language of the OE period bears a lot of traces in common with other
inflected Indo-European languages, Ukrainian and Russian including.
5. The system of vowels in OE included six long and seven short vowels
(monophthongs).
6. The essence of palatal mutation change is that back sounds a or o changes its
quality if there is a front sound in the text.
7. Palatal mutation was not found in monophthongs and diphthongs.
8. Diphthong – a single vowel sound with no change in quality from the beginning
to end of its production.
9. Palatalization – the raising of the tongue towards the hard palate.
10. Rhotacism – the occurrences of [r] in place of some other speech sound.
11. Breaking occurs when the front vowel ǽ, e and i become diphthongs; i.e,. are
broken into two sounds.
12. The essence of back mutation: the articulation of the back vowel is anticipated
in the preceding front vowel which, accordingly, develops into a monophthong.
13. I-mutation, or i-umlaut (a German term meaning ‘sound alteration’) is the First
Vowel Shift.
14. Fracture – is the process of formation of a short diphthong from a simple short
vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster.
15. We find the reflexes of Old English palatal mutation in Present-Day English.
16. Remnants of voicing cannot be seen in the pronunciation of such words as
wives, halves, knives, and leaves.
17. Gradation or ablaut – grammatical interchange of vowels in different forms of
the verb and in word-formation.
18. The lengthening of vowels before the clusters nd, ld, mb – bindan, cild,
climban – explains the exception in the rules of reading the sounds in closed
syllables in present-day English (bind, child, climb).
19. Palatalization of the sounds ‘k’, ‘sk’ and ‘kg’ developed in the formation of a
sibilant before back vowels.
20. There are two types of assimilation – regressive and progressive assimilation.
If a sound influences the preceding sound, the assimilation is regressive, if it
influences the following one, it is called progressive assimilation.

II. Multiple choice: Select the best response or each of the following
questions/statements.

1. The runic alphabet is a specifically … alphabet.

A Celtic
B Germanic
C Latin
D Romance

2. The runes were used for …

A everyday writing
B putting down prose works
C putting down poetry
D making short inscriptions on objects

3. Our knowledge of the OE language comes from manuscripts written in …

letters.
A Greek
B Germanic
C Latin
D Celtic

4. The OE sound System developed from … system.

A the Proto-Germanic
B Indo- European
C Gothic
D Latin
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5. What does the process ‘palatal mutation’ mean?
A loss of consonants in some positions
B growth of new phonemes
C rhotacism
D the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the
succeeding syllable

6. Palatal mutation means …

A raising of vowels through the influence of [i] or [j]
B phonetic relevance of some qualitative differences
C consonant changes
D voicing and devoicing of consonants

7. Velar mutation may be defined as …

A the influence of back vowels in the succeeding syllables, which
transformed the accented root-vowels into diphthongs
B fronting the vowels
C labialization and vowel length
D development of monophthongs

8. OE monophthongs were classified as …

A polyfunctional
B monofunctional
C fixed
D neutralised

9. Define the sound values of the letters f, s, in the intervocalic position.

A [v], [z]
B [f], [s]
C [h], [v]
D [w], [c]

10. Define the phonetic process in the following pairs of words: sandjan – sendan,
an – aniʒ, saljan – sellan, fulljan – fyllan.
A velar mutation
B palatal mutation
C hardening
D voicing
11. Account for the phonetic process in the following words: searo, seofon,
sweostor, weoruld.
A palatal mutation
B velar mutation
C lengthening of vowels
D OE breaking

12. Breaking is the process of forming a short diphthong from a … when it is

followed by a specific consonant cluster.
A long vowel
B short vowel
C long monophthong
D short consonant

III. Matching: Match each of the following linguistic terms or words with the
correct meaning.
1. A speech sound articulated with the tongue touching or approaching the velum.
2. A stop released with an aggressive pulmonic air stream.
3. A speech sound which is produced as a continuous sound by forcing the air
through a partially abstracted vocal tract.
4. A series of combinative changes in vowels when there is an ‘i’ or ‘j’ in the
following syllable.
5. A vowel sound with a syllable with a perceptible change in its quality during its
production.
6. The raising of the tongue towards the hard palate.
7. A single vowel sound with no change in quality from the beginning to the end of
its production.
8. The smallest unit of phonology.
9. The duration of a speech sound as phonological feature …
10. The characteristic timber of a speech sound that depends on the shape of the
resonance chambers in the vocal tract.
A Quantity
B Quality
C Phoneme
D Monophthong
E Diphthong
F Palatalization
G Palatal Mutation
H Plosive
I Fricative
J Velar