Seminar 1
History of English
18 Jan. 2017
Stefan Dollinger
Sound change:
classifications
(Singh 2005: Section 1.2)
Some types of sound change
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Assimilation
Dissimilation
Epenthesis
Aphaeresis, apocope & syncope
Haplology & metathesis
Chain Shifts: Northern California Vowel Shift,
better known as the “Canadian Vowel Shift”
Assimilation
• A sound becomes similar in manner of articulation (stop,
fricative, nasal…) or place of articulation (dental, alveolar,
velar…) or in terms of voicing. Common!
• Middle English (ME) wif + man > wimman
•  complete assimilation [f] > [m]
• house + band > Old English (OE) husband
•  partial assimilation [s] > [z] because of [b]
• husband: anticipatory assimilation (the affected sound
precedes the conditioning one)
• Progressive assimilation (a preceding sound affects a
following one), e.g. past tense marker [t], e.g. rushed [d] >
[t] because of [ʃ] in ‘sh’
• Usually immediate neighbours are affected, but there is
also distant assimilation (in case of, e.g. i-umlaut)
Dissimilation
• When two sounds become more dissimilar
than previously (much rarer than assimilation)
• Latin peregrinus > Engl. Pilgrim
• The first r has become a lateral ([l])
• OE [θeoθ] > ModE thief
• thief [θi:f]
Epenthesis
• Insertion of sounds, epenthetic vowel,
epenthetic consonant
• Knut > [ˌkəˈnut] with epenthetic vowel, rater
than the foreign consonant cluster [ˈknut]
• therm + meter > thermometer.
• OE thunor > ModE thunder
• French passager > English passenger
Aphaeresis, apocope & syncope
• Aphaeresis: loss of an initial (sound) segment,
• E.g. knee > ModE [ni:], PDE about > ‘bout
• Apocope (big in HEL = History of English): loss of a
final sound, usually vowel.
• E.g. OE name [na:mə] > Early Modern English
(EModE) [neɪm], loss of the final schwa.
• Syncope: loss of medial sound, usually vowel.
• E.g. secretary > BrE secret’ry (from four to three
syllables),
Haplology
• Haplology (quite rare) – deletion of an entire
syllable
• E.g. OE Englalond > England, probably >
[ˈprɔbˌlɪ] – deletion of ‘ba’, or gentle + ly >
**gentlely > gently (with haplology of ‘le’)
• * used for reconstructions
• ** used to mark “errors”, i.e. not rulegoverned or attested behaviour
Metathesis
• Switching of two sounds (rare)
• E.g. ME bird < OE brid, OE acsian [aks-] >
ModE ask
Some info on contemporary
Chain Shifts
• Affect more than one vowel
• Southern (US) Vowel Shift, p. 7 in Singh (2005)
• Northern California Vowel Shift,
today better known (and studied) as the
Canadian Shift (because it’s a pan-national
phenomenon in Canada)
• Canadian Shift = Started Post WWII. First
documented in 1995. Affects the lax front
vowels by lowering and/or retracting them
CS = Canadian Shift
(CanE)
The American NCS =
Northern Cities Shift
(“Inland Northern” AmE)
The Northern California Shift (Singh p. 8) is in its key components like
the Canadian Shift. KIT approaches DRESS, DRESS approaches TRAP
and TRAP approaches PALM (approaching, but never reaching it)
Some CanE and AmE varieties are (phonetically) diverging in their front
vowel qualities.
Northern Cities Shift and CS Area
(dark brown), after Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006)
Canadian Shift Area
(light brown)
Northern Cities Shift
Area (dark brown,
spreading)