Lecture 11 Old English Phonetics

Old English is so far removed from Modern English. This is largely due to the peculiarities of its pronunciation.

The Old English sound system developed from the Proto Germanic system. But it underwent many changes in the pre-written periods of history (especially in Early Old English).

Word Stress.

The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes in Early OE. A syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the 1^st syllable and it remained them in different grammatical forms of the word. In words with prefixes the position of the stresses varied. Verb prefixes were unstressed but in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly on the prefix:

e.g. ā-'risan - (verb); 'mis-dæd- (noun); `or-eald (adj-ve)

In case when words were derived from the same root word stress served for distinguishing the noun from the verb:

e.g. (noun) 'and-swaru - (verb) and-'swarian

Vowel Changes

Vowel changes took place in English at every period of history. The development of vowels in OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels and sets of vowels. Changes are the variations in pronunciation when some allophones prevail over the others. The change involve the replacement, splitting and merging.

The PG long [a:] and short [a] became fronted in early OE and split into several sounds. The principal regular direction of the change: