History of
the English Language
Syllabus
Notes
Exercises
WebCT
History of the English Language
Exercises
Terms from Chapter One:
1. speech
2. language
3. duality of patterning
4. phonology
5. lexis
6. morphosyntax
7. collocation
8. synthetic language
9. analytic language
10. concord (agreement)
11. function word
12. prosodic signal
13. oral-aural
14. kinesics
15. paralanguage
16. echoic word
17. onomatopoeia
18. sytagmatic change
19. paradigmatic change
20. social change
21. diachronic
22. synchronic
23. dialect
24. ideolect
25. register
26. Whorf hypothesis
27. open system
28. displacement
Sound Change Definitions (from Old to Middle English)
quality: one sound becomes another; i.e., OE [æ]>ME [a].
quantity ( also known as lengthening or shortening ): a long vowel in OE becomes short in ME (shortening) or a short vowel in OE becomes long in ME (lengthening). See Workbook for specific linguistic environments in which this change occurred.
smoothing (also known as monopthongization ): a diphthong is changed to a single vowel sound; i.e., OE [e:o]> ME [e:].
breaking (also known as diphthongization ): a single vowel is changed to a diphthong; i.e., OE [a] + [w]> ME [aU].
unrounding: a rounded vowel becomes unrounded, especially OE [Ü] > ME [I]
reduction : a full vowel, particularly at the end of words, is reduced, usually to a schwa .
consonant loss : a letter is lost, usually in an OE inflectional ending or an initial consonant sound..
analogy : a less familiar form is changed in favor of one more familiar; i.e., the feminine OE noun synn > ME synne , adopting the final -e by analogy with the more common strong masculine ending.
articulative intrusion: the addition of a new sound produced by the speech organs in progression from one sound to another.
partial assimilation: occurs when a sound adapts to become more like a neighboring sound.
metathesis: the inversion of two sounds.
juncture or displacement: a shift in boundary between syllables.
From Middle to Early Modern English:
quality
apocopation (wholesale loss of schwa)
consonant loss
hypercorrect pronunciation
assibilation
unrounding
Great Vowel Shift
smoothing
analogy
Dr. Carol Jamison
Gamble Hall 202C
Armstrong Atlantic State University
11935 Abercorn St.
Savannah, GA 31419
Phone: 912.344.3097