The Great Vowel Shift.

Early NE witnessed the greatest event in the history of Eng­lish vowels — the Great Vowel Shift, — which involved the change of all ME long monophthongs, and probably some of the diphthongs-

The Great Vowel Shift is the name given to a series of changes of long vowels between the 14th and the I8th c. During this period all the long vowels became closer or were diphthongised. The changes can be defined _as “independent”, as they were not caused by any apparent phonetic conditions in the syllable or in the word, but affected regularly every stressed long vowel in any position.

The changes included in the Great Vowel Shift are shown in Table 5 with some intermediate stages and examples. (It seems reasonable to add to this list the development of the ME diphthong lau] which was narrowed and contracted to Io: ] during the same period, though it is not usually included in the Shift.)

As seen from the table all the vowels became closer and some of the vowels occupied the place of the next vowel in the column: thus Ie:]> [ill, while the more open [e: ] took the place of le:], and later moved one step further in the same direction and merged with the former [e: 1 in li:]. Likewise, the long [o:] was shifted one step, to become lu:l, while ME [u:] changed to fauh Some long vowels— fu:J, Ei:] and la:] — broke into diphthongs, the first element being contrasted to the second as a more open sound: [au], lai] and [ei 1, respectively.

§ 384. It must be noted that some of the diphthongs which arose

during the Great Vowel Shift could also appear from other sources. The diphthong [ou 1 was preserved from ME without modification; [eil could descend from ME [ei] and [ail which had merged into one diphthong. Those were the diphthongs with i- and -u glides going back to Early ME vowel and consonant changes (see § 380 for explanation and examples).

§ 385. The following graphic presentation of the Great Vowel Shift shows the consistent character of the changes; it includes also the ME diphthongs [ou, ei, ai] as additional sources of the diphthongs which developed in the Shift. It should be obvious from the chart and the table that the Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sounds to the vowel system; in fact, every vowel which developed under the Shift can be found in Late ME' •(see the table in § 382). And nevertheless the Great Vowel Shift was the most profound and comprehensive change in the history of English vowels: every long vowel, as well as some diphthongs, were "shifted”, and the pronunciation of all the words with these sounds was altered.

§ 386. It is important to note that the Great Vowel Shift (unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes) was not followed by any regular spelling changes: as seen from the examples the modification in the pro­nunciation of words was not reflected in their written forms. (The few graphic replacements made in the 16th c. failed to reflect the changes: the digraphs ie, ee, and the single e were kept for the close [e: J, while the digraph ea was introduced to show the more open [e: 1 as in steal', the further merging oft le: ] and [e: 1 in [i: ] made the graphic distinction unnecessary — cf. NE steal, steel. A similar distinction between the close [o: ], shown as oo, and the more open [a: 1, shown as oa since the 16th c. proved to be more useful, as these digraphs indicate different sounds (although the gap between the spelling and the pronunciation is greater than it was: oo stands for [u: ] while oa stands for [ou], cf. NE room, roam.)

During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed, for they contained long vowels. Cf. the names of some Fnglish letters before and after the shift:

ME: A la:], E Ie: 1, 0 lo: 1, / [i:l, B [be:], K [ka: 1 NE: A let], E [i:l, 0 [oul, / lax 1, B Ibi: 1, K [kei ].

(By comparing the names of Mod E letters A, 0, E, and I with the familiar Latin names of the same letters one can easily form an idea of the shift (only three more changes [u: ]> (au; ], [o: ]> [u: I and [au I > [₃: ] have to be added). It is also easy to deduce the changes from com­paring the written and spoken forms of many modern words, e.g, time ['ti:ma] becomes [taim], make ['ma:k3l becomes [meik].)

Some Interpretations of the Great Vowel Shift

§ 387. The Great Vowel Shift has attracted the attention of many linguists (K- Luick. O. Jespersen, F. Mosse, A. Martinet, B. Trnfca, V. Plotkin and others).

There are certainly many remarkable aspects in the shift. As we have seen it !eft no long vowel unaltered. All the vowels were changed in a single direction. The changes formed a sort of series or chain, as many vowels took the place of the adjoining closer vowels. The distances between the vowels were on the whole carefully preserved, the only exception being the merging of [e:j and [e:| into li:] In the 18th c.

The changes have been interpreted as starting at one end ot each set of vow­els—front and back,—the initial change stimulating the movement of the other sounds. It the changes started at the more open vowels, [a:] and [o:|. every step “pushed” the adjoining vowel away to avoid coincidence, so that finally the closest vowels, which could not possibly become narrower were “pushed” out of the set of monophthongs into diphthongs: [i:] > [ai) and [u:] > fau}. This interpretation of the shift is known as the "push-chain" (K. Luick).

The opposite view is heid by the exponents of the theory of "drag-chain" (O. Jespersen); according to this theory the changes started at the two closest vow­els, [i:j and [u:]; these dose vowels became diphthongs, '‘dragging’’ after them- selves their neighbours, [e:j and [□:], which occupied the vacant positions; every vowel made one step in this direction, except [e:J which made two: [e:] became le:] and then [i:j.