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The “
great vowel shift
” is the most revolutionary and significant sound change
during the history of the English language and naturally
it took a long time to be
finished.
Another vowel change that affected a large number of English words is
syncope
.
Syncope is the loss of a vowel within a word. This took place in different inflectional
endings of large classes of words in English. E.g., the
Possessive Singular and the
Plural of nouns ended in
-es
in Middle English. The syncopation of
-e
in most words
has since reduced this
-es
to
-s
, the common form of the Possessive Singular and of
the Plural. Similar syncopation
had taken place in the
-
ed
ending
of weak verbs,
except those ending in
-t
or
-
d
. In the
-
en
participial
ending of strong verbs the
syncopation of
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: 
