Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation – a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation (or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c. and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic. I-mutation is a change of root back vowels to front ones or root open vowels to closer ones under the influence of i/j in the next syllable.

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

· [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;

· new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);

2. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);

3. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).

Breaking

Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diph­thongs. If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition from one sound to the other. The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong.

The front vowels [i] and [e] and the newly developed [æ], changed into diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] pJus another consonant, and before [r] plus other consonants, e.g.: OE deorc, NE dark. The change is known as breaking or fructure. Breaking is dated in Early OE, for in OE texts we find the process already completed.

Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE — the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo[ they could enter the system as counterparts of'the long [ea:], [eo: ] which had developed from PG prototypes

Old English Consonant System

The system consisted of several correlated sets of consonants. All the consonants fell into noise consonants and sonorants. The noise con­sonants were subdivided into plosives and fricatives; plosives were further differentiated as voiced and voiceless, the difference being pho­nemic. The fricative consonants were also subdivided into voiced and voiceless; in this set, however, sonority was merely a phonetic difference. The opposition of palatal and velar lingual consonants [k] — [k'], [g]— [g'] had probably become pho­nemic by the time of the earliest written records It is noteworthy that among the OE consonants there were few sibi­lants (s,z) and no affricates.

The most universal distinctive feature in the consonant sys­tem was the difference in length. During the entire OE period long con­sonants are believed to have been opposed to short ones on a phonem­ic level; they were mostly distinguished in intervocal position. Sin­gle and long consonants are found in identical phonetic conditions.

Treatment of Fricatives. Hardening. Rhotacism. Voicing and Devoicing

The changes under Grimm's Law and Verner's Law PG had the following two sets of fricative consonants: voiceless [f, th, x, s] and voiced [v z y z]

In Early OE the difference between the two groups was supported by new features. PG voiced fricatives tended to be hardened to corresponding plosives while voiceless fricatives, being contrasted to them primarily as fricatives to plosives, developed new voiced allophones.

The PG voiced [ð] (due to Verner's Law or to the third act of the shift) was always hardened to [d ] in OE and other WG languages. The two other fricatives, [v] and [γ] were hardened to [b] and [g] ini­tially and after nasals, otherwise they remained fricatives

Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification through the stage [5] into [r] and thus became a sonorant, which ultimately merged with the older IE [r]. This process, termed rhotacism, is characteristic not only of WG but also of NG

In the meantime or somewhat later the PG set of voiceless fricatives [f, q, h, s] and also those of the voiced fricatives which had not turned into plosives, that is, [v] and [y], were subjected to a new pro­cess of voicing and devoicing. In Early OE they became or remained voiced intervocally and between vowels, sonorants and voiced conso­nants; they remained or became voiceless in other environments, name­ly, initially, finally and next to other voiceless consonants.

The mutually exclusive phonetic conditions for voiced and voice­less fricatives prove that in OE they were not phonemes, but allophones.

Velar Consonants in Early Old English. Growth of New Phonemes

The velar consonants Ik,g,x,yl were palatalised before a front vowel, and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel. Thus in OE cild (NE child) the velar consonant [k]was softened to [k'] as it stood before the front vowel [i] In the absence of these phonetic conditions the consonants did not change, with the result that lingual consonants split into two sets, palatal and velar. The difference between them became phonemic when, a short time later, velar and palatal consonants began to occur in simi­lar phonetic conditions.

Growth of new phonemes: Palatalisation of Consonants (a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel

[g, γ, k, h] à [g’, γ’, k’, h’]

Though the difference between velar and palatal consonants was not shown in the spellings of the OE period, the two sets were undoubtedly differentiated since a very early date. In the course of time the phonetic difference between them grew and towards the end of the period the pal­atal consonants developed into sibilants and affricates: |k')>ch [gl>ld31; in ME texts they were indicated by means of special digraphs and letter sequences

Loss of Consonants In Some Positions

Nasal soncrants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the process the preceding vowel was probably nasalised and length­ened

Fricative consonants could be dropped between vowels and before some plosive consonants; these losses were accompanied by a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel or the fusion of the preceding and succeeding vowel into a diphthong,

We should also mention the loss of semi-vowels and conso­nants in unstressed final syllables. |j] was regularly dropped in suffix­es alter producing various changes in the root: palatal mutation of vow­els, lengthening of consonants after short vowels. The loss of [w] is seen in some case forms of nouns

Loss of Consonants:

· sonorants before fricatives (e.g. fimf (Gothic) – fīf (OE) (five));

· fricatives between vowels and some plosives (e.g. sæζde (early OE) – sæde (late OE) (said));

· loss of [j] – as a result of palatal mutation (see examples above);

· loss of [w] (e.g. case-forms of nouns: sæ (Nominative) – sæwe (Dative) (OE) (sea).