B. Unstressed Vowels

The weakening of unstressed vowels, which was characteristic of all Germanic languages and continued during the Old English period, became much more intensive in Middle English, especially in the Northern dialects, owing to Scandinavian influence.

Since both Old English and Old Scandinavian belonged to the Germanic group of languages, they had many features in common, which facilitated the process of communication. It often occurred that the root of a word and its meaning were nearly the same in both languages, while its endings differed.

E.g. OSc sunr – OE sunu (E son).

OSc oxe – OE oxa(ox).

OSc tīme – OE tīma (E time).

OSc binda – OE bindan (E to bind).

Such words were, naturally, freely used by the representatives of both peoples in their conversations. Only the endings were some hindrance. Linguists are of the opinion that such cases accelerated the weakening of the unstressed endings.

Most unstressed vowels were leveled and reduced to a sound of the [•] type, written e.

E.g. OE standan > ME standen (E stand).

OE sunu > ME sone (E son).

OE seofon > ME seven (E seven).

The leveling of endings is so peculiar a feature of the Middle English period that H. Sweet called it “the period of levelled endings”.

Many of such levelled endings were lost during the later part of the Middle English period. Thus, in the following extract Chaucer rhymes swēte and fēt, which shows that the last e in swēte represented no sound. Judging by the rhythm, we may see that e was “mute” in other words as well. We shall mark such e’s thus: e.

ME … And hyt forth wente

E it went

ME doun by a floury grēne bente

E down by flowery green meadow

ME ful thikke of gras ful softe and swēte

E full thick grass full soft sweet

ME with flourys fēle faire under fēt

E flowers many fair feet.

The unstressed OE [i] often remained in ME.

E.g. OE en™lisc > ME english (E English).

In unaccented prefixes OE [o] and [u] mostly remained unchanged, [æ] and [ā] became [a], [e] usually became [i].

E.g. OE for™yfan, ME foryiven (E forgive).

OE fulfyllan, ME fulfille(n), (E fulfill).

OE ārisan, ME arise(n), (E arise).

OE beforan, ME bifore(n), (E before).

In certain phonetic situations, especially between [r] or [l] and [w] there appeared new unstressed vowels.

E.g. OE fol™ian, ME folwen > folowe(n), (E follow).

OE bor™ian, ME borwen > borowe(n), (E borrow).

Unstressed long vowels were shortened in ME.

E.g. OE –dōm (as in frēodōm, cynin™dōm, wīsdōm) > ME –dom (freedom, kingdom, wisdom).

The OE preposition tō > ME to.

The unstressed OE numeral ān (E one) > ME an, the indefinite article.

The same process took place in French loan-words when the shift of stress left the original long vowels unstressed.

E.g. honour [honú:r > hónu:r > hónur].