followed by
-t
(cf.
rough, cough, laugh – brought, daughter
).
-l
is no longer pronounced in normal speech before the labials
m, f, v
and before
the back consonant
k
, as in
palm, calm, half, talk, folk.
The loss of
b
after
m
is the principal survival of the tendency to eliminate final
consonants once so widespread.
B
is no longer pronounced in
comb, lamb,
nor in
inflected forms of these words before a vowel, such as
combing.
The sound represented by
h
in the combination
-ht-
when preceded by original
front vowels, as in
night, light,
etc
.,
and when preceded by back vowels as in
daughter, brought,
etc
.,
disappeared in the Southern dialect as early as the 15
th
century.
When
i
was preceded by a consonant and followed by a lightly stressed vowel, it
became [
ј
] at the beginning of the 17
th
century, and when the preceding consonant
was
t
or
s
, the [
ј
] combined with it to give [
ʃ
], as in
special, ambition, partial.
Similarly the group [z
ј
] has given [
ʒ
] in such words as
pleasure, leisure.
The group
[d
ј
] became [d
ʒ
], as in
soldier, verdure.
39
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: 
