chapter 11.9: vowel sound changes

Vowels are fundamentally different from consonants in several ways that affect how
they can change. First, all vowels are voiced, so there cannot be a change in voicing.
Second, all vowels are said in the same manner, so there cannot be changes in manner
either. Finally, vowels are not produced by placing the tongue in contact with discrete
speech organs, so there can be no movement from one part to another either. The features
of vowels that can change are frontness, height,
roundedness, and tenseness. The causes of these
changes can be neighboring consonants, although that is rare. More often, the change
is a “long-distance” change in that it is produced by assimilating with vowels in a
preceding or following syllable (since vowels form the nucleus of a syllable, other
vowels are most often in other syllables). This type of change, where one vowel is
influenced by another, is called metaphony.

One type of metaphony vowels undergo is called mutation, where a
vowel in one syllable “anticipates” a vowel in a following syllable and changes to
become more like it. The structure of a two-syllable word can be written like
this CV₁CV₂C, where C = Consonant and V = Vowel. In mutation
V₁ changes to become more like V₂, because it is easier for
the tongue to anticipate the shape it will need to be in for the following vowel.
For example, we have a word in which V₁ is a low vowel and V₂
is a high vowel, V₁ could be “raised” to a high vowel to anticipate
the height of V₂ in the following syllable.

Perhaps the most common example of mutation in English occurred just before the Old
English period, when V₂ was an [i], a high front vowel. This caused the
V₁ vowels to mutate towards the front of the mouth. We call this change
either front mutation, or i-mutation, or in German,
Umlaut, and it has had major effects throughout English.
Compare the list of words with back vowels in the first column, followed by related
words with fronted vowels in the second:

In all these examples the words on the left hand are the original words and contain
back vowels. In the period just before Old English, new words were made out of
them by adding suffixes with the high front vowel [i], and this pulled the back vowel
in the original word to the front.

Vowels can also be raised or lowered (depending on
tongue height). For example, Standard American, the pronunciation of pen
is [pɛn] but in the South it is often [pɪn], so that it sounds more like the word
pin. The mid front lax vowel /ɛ/ has been raised to the high front lax vowel
/ɪ/ because of the following nasal.

Chain shifts

Vowels can also move in what are called chain shifts. This is not a
form of assimilation or metaphony. Rather, it is a process of movement that starts
with the raising or lowering of one vowel, which results in a chain of all other
vowels moving to fill in the resulting gaps. The most famous one in English is the
Great Vowel Shift of the 15th through the 18th centuries, but other
chain shifts are currently going on in regional dialects of American English.
If you are interested, you might look at the charts and descriptions (with audio
examples) of the Northern
California vowel shift that is currently underway. The
Northern
Cities Shift explains why vowels of speakers from places like Chicago
or Detroit sound so distinctive. We will not be covering these shifts in
much detail in this class, mostly because they are still evolving, and therefore
are not part of the past history of English.

Reduction

Reduction is a change in the tenseness of vowel sounds, resulting
in less tenseness. Vowels that are reduced change in a progression from tense to
lax to schwa to zero or null, i.e., they are lost entirely. This is the standard
progression in all English vowels in unaccented syllables, although not all vowels
have or will undergo each stage of this progression, and it has had more of an impact
on English grammar than anything other sound change.

An example of reduction is the vowel in the word “man,” [mæn], a low, front vowel.
When the word stands alone and is stressed, the vowel remains in position. When the
word is joined in a compound, as in “chairman,” it is no longer stressed and therefore
is reduced. It may be pronounced as a schwa (i.e., moved from the front to the central,
that is, neutral, position) [čɛrmən], or even reduced to zero: [čɛrmn̩].

When reduction of a vowel is complete (i.e., the vowel is lost completely), then
it is called elision: the loss of a sound because it is unstressed
(elision can be used of both consonants and vowels). Elision is widespread in two of
our major grammatical categories: the s-plural and the ed-past tense. The plural
ending used to be a full syllable, as it remains in some words (“dishes”), but in
most words the -e- has reduced to zero, that is, it has been elided. The same reduction
has happened in the past tense -ed, which usually takes the form of either a [t]
or a [d] on the ends of verbs.

There are specific words to describe different types of elision, depending on where
in the word the sound has been lost:

• apheresis: loss of an unstressed vowel at the front of words:
  ’bout (for about), ’round (for around)
• syncope: loss of vowel sounds in the middle of a word:
  laboratory, comfortable [kəɱftərbəl] (which includes metathesis of the [r] and
  [t]), family, contractions such as “can’t” or “isn’t” for “cannot” and “is not”
• apocope: loss of vowels from the end of a word (this
  has happened historically in many English words; we will see examples later).

Note: these terms, apheresis, syncope and apocope, can refer to loss of
both vowels and consonants. Thus, “chile” as a pronunciation of “child” with simplification
of the final consonant cluster is an example of apocope, or “fith” as a pronunciation
of “fifth” is an example of syncope, as is “won’t” for “will not.” The pronunciations
‘im or ‘e as a pronunciation of “him” or “he” are examples of consonant apheresis.
But the most common losses are with unstressed vowels.

Epenthesis: In addition to the loss of sounds, sometimes sounds are
added. Epenthesis can be the addition of vowels, such as when “athlete” is pronounced like
“athalete,” or of consonants, such as in the following examples: “drownded” for “drowned,”
“fambly” for “family” (compare also “chimbly” for chimney” with dissimulation and epenthesis),
“hampton” for what was originally “hamton,” “thunder” for what used to be “thunor,”
and “sherbert” for “sherbet.”

chapter 11.7: Unconditioned sound changes

One of the primary areas of change within a language is the change in its system
of sounds, and much of the nineteenth-century work in linguistics was spent in
figuring out exactly how the sounds in one language corresponded to those in another.
People had long recognized that there were similarities between languages, even
when the pronunciation differed. For example, English “hound” and German “Hund”
both mean “dog” and are so similar that there must be some type of relation between
them, but the precise nature of the connection was unclear. As the nineteenth
century progressed, linguists gathered such correspondences
between the sounds of as many related languages as they could and began to notice
more and more patterns. The greatest example of this is what we call
Grimm’s Law.
Grimm noted that there were
correspondences between the consonants in Germanic languages and those in languages
like Greek and Latin, for example the correspondence between the “t” in Latin
tres, tu and tenuis and the “th” in English three,
thou and thin, or the relationship between the “p” in pater, piscis,
and pedemand the “f” in father, fish, and foot. Grimm
suggested that this correspondence was 1) a
regular one that occurred throughout the language, rather than being entirely
random, and 2) that it had happened at a historical point in time.

As ground-breaking as these two suggestions were, it was a later generation of
scholars, the Neogrammarians, who pushed them to their full conclusion. They
suggested that sound changes like this were not only regular, but that they occurred without
exception. Thus, it wasn’t just that some instances of the phoneme /t/ in Indo-European
languages become /θ/ in Germanic languages, but every single /t/ turned into /θ/.
As they put it, Die Lautgesetze kennen keine Ausnahmen: “Sound Laws know of no exception.”
They modeled the name “Sound Law” on the observable laws that had been discovered
in other sciences like Newton’s Laws of Motion. For the Neogrammarians,
laws could be formulated describing the production and changes of sounds in human
speech in the same way that Newton and others could observe the natural world
and formulate laws that described natural phenomena. The difference between a law
like Grimm’s and one like Newton’s is that Grimm’s Law occurred at one point
in time (i.e., it was historical) and then stopped. Newton’s Law of Inertia
always works.

Sound Laws like these are known as unconditioned
changes, meaning they occur throughout the language without the necessity of
there being any special phonetic conditions the word.
For example, the change from /t/ to /θ/ that we see in a correspondence like Latin
tres and English three did not happen because of the specific
vowel in the word, or the presence of the
phoneme /r/. No special conditions
were needed for it to take place. This separated these types of changes
from the conditioned changes that only occurred under specific
conditions.

Perhaps the most famous unconditioned sound changes in English are Grimm’s Law and
the Great Vowel Shift,
but there are others occurring today. Cities like Buffalo and
Rochester in the Northern US are undergoing what is known as the Northern Cities Shift,
and while parts of California
and the southern US
are in the midst of their own unconditioned vowel changes.
The “cot-caught”
merger in which the vowels in these two words start to rhyme
has affected a large part of the US.

chapter 11.5: vowels

Like consonants, vowels are made by expelling air from the lungs through the
vibrating vocal cords and into the oral cavity. Unlike the consonants, however,
when we make the vowel sounds we do not close or greatly obstruct the air flow.
Instead, we move the tongue into various places and raise or lower our lower jaw,
and by doing so, we alter the frequency of the vibrations caused by the air flow
and vocal cords. The variations in frequency are perceived as different phonemes.
In General American English twelve distinct vowel phonemes can be distinguished,
as shown in the following chart.

The chart represents the inside of the mouth with the teeth towards the left.
Where the chart says “front” is the front of the mouth, specifically the area
just behind the teeth, the alveolar ridge. The right-hand side of the chart,
which is labeled “back” is the back of the mouth, roughly where the velum, or
soft palate, is. Similarly, the three sections labeled “high,” “mid,” and “low”
represent the roof of the mouth down to the lower jaw. The symbols are placed
at the various locations within the mouth where the tongue moves in order to
make the relevant vowel sound. The symbols in the white area represent the
vowels in which the tongue is fairly “tense” while saying them, while the symbols
within the grayed area are made with a relaxed tongue. Finally, the four vowel
symbols within the box in the back, high, and mid area are vowels which are
pronounced while the lips are “rounded.” Further explanation of this terminology
will be found below.

An interactive vowel chart, with audio examples, can be found here.

Distinctive Features

Vowels are distinguished by four distinctive features:

• height: Vowel height can be high,
  mid, and low, depending on whether the tongue
  is near the roof of the mouth (i.e., high), or near the floor of the mouth. For
  example, say just the vowels of the words beet, bait, bat, concentrating
  on where your tongue is. The first has a high vowel, the second a mid vowel,
  and the third a low vowel.
• frontness: Vowels can be front,
  central and back, depending on where the
  tongue is. English generally distinguishes only front and back vowels.
  For example, say just the vowels in the words bait and bought
  and feel the position of the tongue sliding forward and back against the
  roof of the mouth. Both are mid vowels, but the first is a front vowel
  and the second is a back vowel.
• tenseness: Vowels can be tense or
  lax, depending again on the tongue. As examples, say
  beet, which has a tense vowel, and then say bit, which has a
  lax vowel. Tense and lax only applies to high and mid vowels. The low vowels
  do not have tense distinctions.
• roundedness: Vowels can be rounded or unrounded
  depending on the shape of the lips. In English generally the front vowels are unrounded
  and the back vowels (at least the mid and high ones) are rounded. For example,
  say the vowels in beet and boot. Besides the tongue
  sliding back and forth to the front and back, you will notice that your lips
  become rounded to say boot but they are not rounded when you say
  beet.

In what follows I will describe the 15 vowel phonemes of English. All
vowels are produced by expelling air through the oral cavity, with minimal
restriction provided by tongue placement and lip rounding. All vowels are
voiced.

High Vowels

• front, tense, unrounded /i/. Examples: bee, beat, machine
• front, lax, unrounded /ɪ/. Examples, bit, flip
• back, tense, rounded /u/. Examples: moon, mood, rude
• back, lax, rounded /ʊ/. Examples: put, foot

Mid Vowels

• front, tense, unrounded /e/. Examples: bait, day, made, name.
• front, lax, unrounded /ɛ/. Examples: bet, head, peck.
• back, tense, rounded /o/: Examles: boat, hope, moan.
• back, lax, rounded /ɔ/: Examples: bought, caught,
  hawk (Note: this phoneme is often not part of the
  Western American dialect)

Low Vowels

• front, unrounded /æ/. Examples: cat, bat.
• back, unrounded /ɑ/. Examples: cot, hock,
  pot, bother, father.
  (People with a Western American dialect will also pronounce
  bought, caught with this vowel
  instead of /ɔ/).

Two other vowel sounds occur

• /ʌ/. This symbol represents is a central, mid, unrounded, lax vowel.
  For many Americans it does not contrast with the following vowel, but is used
  only for stressed vowels. Examples: cup, luck,
  love.
• /ə/. This is the schwa, the reduced central >mid vowel
  found in most unaccented syllables. It comprises several different vowel
  sounds, all found in unaccented syllables, specifically [ə], as in
  about, sofa, occur,
  nation. And a slightly higher vowel, [ɨ], as in
  dishes, messes, rated,
  raided. For the purposes of this course you can transcribe
  both of these as /ə/ if you wish, but you should be aware of both symbols
  in case you see them elsewhere.

Diphthongs

All the above vowel sounds are monophthongs, that is,
they are single vowel sounds. As such, they are distinguished from
diphthongs, two vowels sounds spoken together in a
single syllable. There are three phonemic diphthongs in American English.
Each consists of a main vowel, followed by an offglide which is either a
front or back high vowel. (Note: The “ph” in the
words monophthong and diphthong can be pronounced either as an [f] or a [p]).

• /aɪ/. This sound starts with /a/, a low front vowel very similar to /æ/,
  followed by a glide toward /ɪ/. Examples: rice,
  wife, eye.
• /aʊ/. This sound also starts with /a/, but the glide is the rounded back vowel
  /ʊ/. Examples: house, brown, cow.
• /ɔɪ/. This sound starts with the mid back rounded vowel /ɔ/ before
  moving to the front unrounded /ɪ/. Examples: joy,
  boy, boil.

A note on the pronunciations of monophthongs as diphthongs in American
English: Most speakers of American English pronounce the simplex vowels like
/e/ and /o/ as the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ]. As a result, some textbooks and
online resources give represent these vowels in IPA as diphthongs. In British
resources /o/ is often represented as [ɛʊ]. We will make these distinctions when
necessary, but otherwise will treat these vowels as if they were pronounced
simply /e/ and /o/.