1. Seminar 1 History of English
18 Jan. 2017
Stefan Dollinger

2. Sound change: classifications (Singh 2005: Section 1.2)

3. Some types of sound change
Assimilation
Dissimilation
Epenthesis
Aphaeresis, apocope & syncope
Haplology & metathesis
Chain Shifts: Northern California Vowel Shift, better known as the “Canadian Vowel Shift”

4. 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)

5. 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]

6. 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

7. 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),

8. 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 rule-governed or attested behaviour

9. Metathesis Switching of two sounds (rare)
E.g. ME bird < OE brid, OE acsian [aks-] > ModE ask

10. 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 Affects the lax front vowels by lowering and/or retracting them

11. 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.

12. 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)