This is an attempt to view historical phonological change as an ongoing, recurrent process. The author sees like events occurring at all periods, a phenomenon which he considers is disguised by too great a reliance upon certain characteristics of the scholarly tradition. Thus he argues that those innovations arrived at by speakers of the English language many years ago are not in principle unlike those that can be seen to be happening today. Phonological mutations are, on the whole, not to be regarded as unique, novel, once only events. Speakers appear to present to speech sound materials, a limited set of evaluative and decoding perceptions, together with what would seem to be a finite number of innovation producing stratagems in response to their interpretation. It is stressed that this interpretation may itself be a direct product of the kinds of data selected for presentation in traditional handbooks and Jones notes the fact that phonological change is often "messy" and responsive to a highly tuned ability to perceive fine phonetic detail of a type which, by definition, rarely has the opportunity to surface in historical data sources.
Author(s): Charles Jones
Series: Longman Linguistics Library
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 1989
Language: English
Pages: 318
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Dedication
1 Aims, methods and model
1.1 Aims
1.2 Method
1.3 Model
2 The Early English period: the beginnings to the thirteenth century
2.1 The nature of the data
2.2 Vowel lengthening processes in Old English
2.2.1 Compensatory lengthening
2.2.2 Lengthenings in more general fricative contexts
2.2.3 Stressed vowel lengthening in nasal sonorant contexts
2.2.4 Lengthening in nasal and non-nasal sonorant contexts: Late Old English homorganic lengthening
2.2.5 The reconstruction of vowel length
2.2.6 The date of the homorganic lengthening process
2.3 Diphthongization processes in Old English
2.3.1 Old English Breaking
2.3.2 Breaking of long stressed vowels
2.3.3 Causes of this diphthongization in pre[x], [r], [l] contexts
2.3.4 Did this diphthongization ever really happen?
2.3.5 Exceptions to the Breaking process
2.3.6 Breaking in other fricative contexts
2.4 Monophthongization processes: Late Old English developments to Breaking-produced diphthongs
2.4.1 The instability of contextually derived alternations
2.4.2 Monophthongization and raising as a unified process
2.4.3 Middle English monophthongization processes
2.4.4 The Middle English development of the Old English [eo] diphthong
2.4.5 Special Kentish developments: syllabicity shifting
2.5 Vowel harmony processes in Old English
2.5.1 Backness/labial harmony two: Old English Back Mutation or Back Umlaut
2.5.2 Palatal/frontness vowel harmony: Old English i-umlaut
2.5.3 The nature of palatal vowel harmony in Old English
3 The Middle English period: the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries
3.1 The nature of the data
3.2 Vowel lengthening processes in Middle English
3.2.1 Open syllable lengthening in other languages
3.2.2 Lengthening and lowering as a unified process
3.2.3 Some further thoughts on open syllable lengthening
3.2.4 ‘Exceptions’ to open syllable lengthening
3.2.5 Middle English open syllable lengthening as a vowel harmony process
3.2.6 Middle English open syllable lengthening and homorganic clusters
3.3 Vowel length and vowel raising: the Middle English vowel shift
3.3.1 The first English vowel shift
3.3.2 The Middle English vowel shift
3.3.3 The irregular application of palatalization/labialization
3.4 Diphthongization processes in Middle English: Middle English Breaking
3.4.1 Middle English Breaking in voiceless velar fricative environments: diphthongization of back mid vowels
3.4.2 Middle English Breaking in voiced fricative contexts: Middle English [j] Breaking
3.4.3 Diphthongization by [w] vocalization
3.4.4 Middle English Breaking in the sonorant consonant [r] and [l] environment
3.4.5 Middle English Breaking in other sonorant and fricative environments
3.4.6 Other Breaking stratagems: bi-continuant cluster busting
3.5 Syllable shapes and their phonetic consequences
3.5.1 Syllable contact points
3.5.2 Stratagems for achieving ambisyllabicity
3.5.3 ‘Shuffling’ the linear sequence of segments in syllables: metathesis
4 The sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries
4.1 The nature of the data
4.2 Vowel length and vowel shifting: the English vowel shift
4.2.1 Possible motivations for such ‘large scale’ processes
4.2.2 Vowel shifts as independent phonetic events
4.3 Vowel diphthongizations and lengthenings: Breaking contexts and vocalizations
4.3.1 More Breaking stratagems: bi-continuant cluster busting again
4.4 Monophthongization processes
4.4.1 [au] and [ai] diphthongs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
4.4.2 Middle English [au] diphthong developments
4.4.3 Other [au] developments
4.4.4 Middle English [aei] diphthong developments
4.5 Syllable shapes and their phonetic consequences
4.5.1 [h] 'dropping' and insertion
4.5.2 Nasals at syllable interface
5 The eighteenth century to the present day
5.1 The nature of the data
5.2 Vowel length and vowel shifting: the English vowel shift
5.2.1 Vowel shifts and mergers
5.2.2 Merger avoiding stratagems
5.3 Diphthongization processes: vowel shifts and diphthongization
5.3.1 Long [ee] mid vowel alternants: a case study of a modern dialect
5.3.2 Vocalization and Breaking
5.3.3 [r] effacement and vocalization
5.4 Syllable shapes and their phonetic consequences: [r] at syllable interface
5.5 Monophthongization processes: monophthongization and merger
Bibliography
Index
