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The phonology of Old English is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved purely as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of Old English, and the written language apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.

Sound inventory

The inventory of surface sounds (whether allophones or phonemes) of Old English is as shown below.

Consonants

  Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop          
Affricate              
Nasal          
Fricative  
Approximant          
Lateral approximant              
1. The exact nature of Old English r is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant , as in most Modern English accents, an alveolar flap , or an alveolar trill . In this article we will use the symbol indiscriminately to stand for this phoneme.

Consonant allophones

The sounds marked in parentheses are allophones:
  • is an allophone of occurring after and when geminated
    • For example, senġan "to singe" is < <
    • and bryċġ "bridge" is < < <
  • is an allophone of occurring before and
    • For example, hring "ring" is ; did not occur alone word-finally in Old English as it does in Modern English.
  • are allophones of respectively, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants.
    • For example, stafas "letters" is < , smiþas "blacksmiths" is < , and hūses "house (genitive)" is < .
  • are allophones of occurring in coda position after front and back vowels respectively. The evidence for this is indirect, as it is not indicated in the orthography. Nevertheless, the fact that there was historically a fronting of to and of to after front vowels makes it very likely. Moreover, in late Middle English, sometimes became (e.g. tough, cough), but only after back vowels, never after front vowels. This is explained if we assume that the allophone sometimes became but the allophone never did.
    • For example, cniht "boy" is , while ġeþōht "thought" is
  • is an allophone of occurring after a vowel or liquid. Historically, is older, and originally appeared in word-initial position as well; for Proto-West Germanic (PWG) and probably the earliest Old English it makes more sense to say that is an allophone of after a nasal. But after became word-initially, it makes more sense to treat the stop as the basic form and the fricative as the allophonic variant.
    • For example, dagas "days" is and burgum "castles (dative)" is

Vowels

Monophthongs Short Long
Front Back Front Back
Close
Mid
Open

The front mid rounded vowels occur in some dialects of Old English, but not in the best attested Late West Saxon dialect. There is also historical evidence suggesting that short /e/ and /o/ were phonetically lower and/or more centralized (perhaps and ) than the corresponding long ones.

Diphthongs Short (monomoraic) Long (bimoraic)
First element is close
Both elements are mid
Both elements are open
2. It is uncertain whether the diphthongs spelt ie/īe were pronounced or . The fact that this diphthong was merged with in many dialects suggests the former.

The distribution of velars and palatals

The pairs ~ and ~ are almost certainly distinct phonemes synchronically in Late West Saxon, the dialect in which the majority of Old English documents are written. This is shown by such near-minimal pairs as:
  • drincan "to drink" vs. drenċan "to drench"
  • gēs "geese" vs. ġē "you"
Nevertheless there are very few environments in which both the velars and the palatals can occur; in most environments only one or the other set occurs. Also, the two sets alternate with each other in ways reminiscent of allophones, for example:
  • ċēosan "to choose" vs. curon "chose (pl.)"
  • ġēotan "to pour" vs. guton "poured (pl.)"
(In the standardized orthography used on this page, c stands for , ċ for , g for and , and ġ for and . The geminates of these are spelled cc, ċċ, cg, ċġ.)

The best way to explain the distribution of c~ċ and g~ġ is through historical linguistics. The PWG ancestor of both c and ċ is ; the ancestor of both g and ġ is . Palatalization of to ċ and of to ġ happened in the following environments:

  • before PWG nonlow front vowels () as well as PWG
    • Examples: ġifþ "(he) gives" < , ċīdan "to chide" < , ċeorl "churl" < , ġēotan "pour" < ; non-initially bēċ "books" < , sēċan "seek" < , bryċġ "bridge" <
  • before OE < PWG (but not before OE < PWG by a-restoration)
    • Examples: ġeaf "gave" < , ċēace "cheek" <
  • before OE < PWG
    • Examples: ċēas "chose (sg.)" < , ġēat "poured (sg.)" <
  • before OE < PWG by breaking
    • Examples: ċeald "cold" < , ġeard "yard" <
  • after OE , unless a back vowel followed
    • Examples: iċ "I" < PWG , dīċ "ditch, dike" < PWG (but wicu "weak")
  • after OE and ( only!), unless a back vowel followed
    • Examples: weġ "way" < PWG , næġl "nail" < PWG , mǣġ "relative" < PWG (but wegas "ways")
The velars remained velar, however, before back vowels that underwent i-mutation (umlaut):
  • cyning "king" <
  • gēs "geese" <
  • cemban "to comb" <
  • macian "to make" <
Palatalization was undone before consonants in OE:
  • sēcþ "he seeks" < *sēċþ <
  • sengþ "he singes" < *senġþ <
The palatalization of PWG to OE (spelled sċ) is much less restricted: word-initially it is found before back vowels and r as well as in the environments where ċ and ġ are found.
  • sċuldor "shoulder" <
  • sċort "short" <
  • sċrūd "dress" <
Non-initially palatalization to sċ is found before PWG front vowels and j, and after front vowels in OE, but not before an OE back vowel
  • fisċ "fish" <
  • āscian "ask" <
In addition to from the palatalization of PWG , Old English also has from PWG , which could stand before back vowels:
  • ġeong "young" < PWG
  • ġeoc "yoke" < PWG
Many instances where a ċ/c, ġ/g, or sċ/sc alternation would be expected within a paradigm, it was levelled out by analogy at some point in the history of the language. For example, the velar of sēcþ "he seeks" has replaced the palatal of sēċan "to seek" in Modern English (though not in the related verb beseech).

Phonological processes

A-restoration

The Anglo-Frisian languages underwent a sound change in their development from Proto-West Germanic by which the vowels were fronted to unless followed by a nasal consonant, a process known in the literature as Anglo-Frisian brightening.

Later in Old English, short (and in some dialects long as well), was backed to when there was a back vowel in the following syllable. Because strong masculine and neuter nouns have back vowels in the plural, alternations like in the singular vs. in the plural are common in this noun class:

alternation in masculine and neuter strong nouns
Case Masculine Neuter
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative dæġ dagas fæt fatu
Accusative dæġ dagas fæt fatu
Genitive dæġes daga fætes fata
Dative dæġe dagum fæte fatum

Breaking

Breaking in Old English is the diphthongization of the short vowels to short (monomoraic) when followed by or by or plus another consonant. Note that /l/ in implosive position has a velar quality (the "dark l" allomorph on PDE all, cold), and is therefore indicated as . The geminates rr and ll count as r or l plus another consonant. (But the change → does not happen before plus consonant unless the cluster is .)

Examples:

  • weorpan "to throw" <
  • wearp "threw (sing.)" <
  • feoh "money" <
  • feaht "fought (sing.)" <
  • healp "helped (sing.)" <
  • feorr "far" <
  • feallan "to fall" <
  • eolh "elk" < (but no breaking in helpan "to help" because the consonant after is not )

The breaking of as a result of i-mutation of is .

Examples:

  • hwierfþ "turns" (intr.) < < + I-mutation <
  • hwierfan "to turn" (tr.) < < + I-mutation <

h-loss

In the same contexts where the voiceless fricatives become voiced, i.e. between vowels and between a voiced consonant and a vowel, is lost, with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel if it is short. Breaking before and takes place regardless of whether the is lost by this rule. An unstressed short vowel is absorbed into the preceding long vowel.

Examples:

  • sċōs "shoe" (gen.) < < , cf. sċōh (nom.)
  • fēos "money" (gen.) < < < , cf. feoh (nom.)
  • wēalas "foreigners, Welsh people" < < , cf. wealh (sing.)

i-mutation

See i-mutation in Old English

Vowels after palatals

The vowels ie/īe and ea/ēa generally occur in Old English after ċ, ġ, sċ where the vowels e/ē and æ/ would be expected.

Examples:

  • sċieran "to cut", sċear "cut (past sing.)", sċēaron "cut (past pl.)", which belongs to the same conjugation class (IV) as beran "to carry", bær "carried (sing.)", "carried (pl.)"
  • ġiefan "to give", ġeaf "gave (sing.)", ġēafon "gave (pl.)", ġiefen "given", which belongs to the same conjugation class (V) as tredan "to tread", træd "trod (sing.)", "trod (pl.)", treden "trodden"

The traditional view of this (e.g. Campbell 1959, Mitchell and Robinson 2001) is that the vowels were actually diphthongized in this position.

A minority view (e.g. Lass 1994) is that this phenomenon is purely orthographic, and that no diphthongization took place. Under this view, the words listed above have the following pronunciations:

  • sċieran
  • sċear
  • sċēaron
  • ġiefan
  • ġeaf
  • ġēafon
  • ġiefen
The main argument in favor of this view is the fact that diphthongizations like → and → (if this is the correct interpretation of orthographic ie) are phonetically unmotivated in the context of a preceding palatal or postalveolar consonant.

References

Language phonologies | Old English language

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Old English phonology".

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