a>æ Þata – Þæt (ME that) a: > æ

is referred to as the fronting or palatalisation.

The other directions can be interpreted as positional deviation or restrictions, because they mainly occur before a nasal:

Short a → [o] or [ā] and long a: →[o:]

manna→ mon (man)

māno→ mōna (moon)

The PG diphthongs [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] changed in early OE. They took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment.

ains→ ān (one)

All the changes were interconnected.

Under the influence of preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diphthongs.

If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant a short glide developed between them. The glide together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong. The front vowels [i], [ e]. [æ] changed into diphthongs with a back glide when:

1) they stood before [h],

2) before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] plus another consonant,

3) before [r] plus another consonant

e.g. [e] → [eo] deorc (dark)

This change is known as breaking.(ПЕРЕГЛАСОВКА) Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE. So the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo] appeared and it was more typical for West Saxon than for the dialects of Mercian and Nothumbrian:

e.g. WS tealde Mercian: talde (told)

Diphthongisation of vowels could be caused by preceding consonants. A glide arose after a palatal consonant as a sort of transition to the succeeding vowel. After the palatal consonants [k’], [sk’], [j’] short and long sounds [æ], [e] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, → In the resulting diphthong the initial [i] or [e] sounds were unstressed but later the stress shifted to the 1^st element, which turned into the neucleus to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs. This process known as diphthongization after palatal consonants occurred some time in the 6^th century.

Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable.

e.g. Gt sandjan OE sendan (send)

e.g. OHG swestar OE sweostor (NE sister)

Palatal mutation must have taken place during the 7^th c.

All these changes affected accented vowels. The development of vowels in unstressed syllables was different. In unaccented syllables long vowels were shortened and the position of long and short vowels was neutralized. Some short vowels in final unaccented syllables were dropped.

monophthongs diphthongs

Short i, e, æ, a, o, u, y ie, ea, eo

Long i:, e:, æ:, a:, o:, u:, y: ie:, ea:, eo:

Consonants were more stable than vowels, though certain changes took place in all historical periods. Most consonants underwent diverse changes: qualitative, quantitative, dependent and independent.