‘“The Great Vowel Shift”: nature and evidence’
Gjertrud F. Stenbrenden, University of Oslo
In the so-called ‘Great Vowel Shift’, the seven long monophthongs of Middle English were all
changed in their phonetic realisations, as indicated below.
Middle English /i:/ > /әi/ > /aɪ/, as in white, like
Middle English /e:/ > /i:/, as in queen, green
Middle English /æ:/ > /e:/ > /i:/, as in deal, wheat
Middle English /a:/ > /æ:/ > /e:/ > /eɪ/, as in dame, take
Middle English /u:/ > /әu/ > /aʊ/, as in house, brown
Middle English /o:/ > /u:/, as in tooth, moon
Middle English /ɔ:/ > /o:/ > /oʊ/ > /әʊ/, as in stone, home
As a result, the citation forms of the letters in English do not correspond to their Continental
values. Consider, for example, the letter ‘a’, which has the citation form /a:/ in Swedish,
Norwegian and German, but /eɪ/ in English. Traditionally, the Shift has been dated to the period
1400-1750, and has been treated as something unique to English as well as unique within
English.
But what kind of evidence is there to enable historical linguists to (a) postulate the Shift in the
first place, or (b) date the Shift? Does the available evidence support the traditional dating? Can
anything be concluded in terms of the locus of change? Finally, what exactly happened in the
Shift, and why? This presentation aims to provide answers to all these questions, making use
of corpora of Middle English texts.