Vowels in Motion

John Goldsmith

February 9, 2015

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Overview of today’s lecture

1 Introduction

2 What’s a vowel?

3 Vowels in English today

4 Other vowels systems you may know

5 The Great Vowel Shift

6 The Northern Cities Vowel Shift

7 Conclusion: vowels in motion

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Change

All languages change, but all the changes happenedin front of some people’s eyes. What did that looklike?

...is in the present

What does language look like today? All change isin the present: not all people speak the samelanguage the same way.

What changes?

Changes can occur in vocabulary, in pronunciation,and in grammar (syntax).

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Vowels?

What is a vowel, and what is a consonant?

A vowel is a sound inwhich the hum from thelarynx resonates in thechambers of the mouth.

A consonant is producedby blocking airflow in themouth and producingturbulence.

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Vowels

Jaw position

Tongue position

Lip rounding

Length

movement (diphthongs move!)

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Vowels: positions and formants

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Vowels: formants

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Front vowels in English

Short vowels Long vowelspit i [I] by i [aj]pet e [E] Pete e [ij]pat a [æ] pate a [ej]

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Back vowels in English

Short vowels Long vowelsput oo [U] boot oo [uw]putt u [2] bound ou [æw]bought o [O] boat o [ow]pot o [a]

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Ah! . . . awe

a O

Don dawncot caughtConnery Sean

coffeeoff

Diphthong?

New Yorkers often make this vowel (in awe, off. . . ) adiphthong. Listen to me. . .

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American h—d h— b—d h—t k—dij heed he bead heat keyedI hid bid hit kidej hayed hay bayed hate CadeE head bedæ had bad hat cada hod ha! bod hot codO hawed haw bawd haughty cawedU hood could

ow hoed hoe abode Hoat codeuw who’d who booed hoot2 Hudd bud hut cudÄ herd her bird hurt curdaj hide high bide height

æw how bowed cowedahoy Boyd Hoyt12

Simple vowels in English

i

I

e

E

æ

u

U

o

O

A

2 @

High vowels

Mid vowels

Low vowels

Front vowelsCentral vowelsBack vowels

Rounded vowels

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Diphthongs in English

i

e

æ

hey!

and

u

o

O

A

oh!oy!

Hi!

Ouch!

@

High vowels

Mid vowels

Low vowels

Front vowelsCentral vowelsBack vowels

Rounded vowels

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Related words

long short long shortserene serenity [ij] [E]please pleasant [ij] [E]crime criminal [aj] [I]divine divinity [aj] [I]profane profanity [ej] [æ]abound abundant [æw] [2]goose gosling [uw] [a]

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Spanish diphthongs: stressed midvowels

cantar sing llamar call pensar think

1st Sg canto llamo pienso2nd Sg cantas llamas piensas (pensas)3rd Sg canta llamo piensa1st Pl cantamos llamamos pensamos2nd Pl cantais llamais pensais3rd Pl cantan llaman piensan

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The Great Vowel Shift in English

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The Great Vowel Shift in English

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The Great Vowel Shift in English

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The Great Vowel Shift

Before the Great Vowel Shift, English speakersused to pronounce the vowels of the words thatthey shared with speakers of other Europeanlanguages in much the same way.

The GVS affected the long vowels of MiddleEnglish, and began around 1400.

So the Great Vowel Shift began well beforeShakespeare’s time, and continued during hislifetime (1564-1616).

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The Great Vowel Shift

When did the GVS begin? Some time after theBlack Death, the great plague that killedsomewhere around half the population ofEurope in the middle of the 14th century. Butwe really don’t know what the social factorswere that gave rise to it.

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Before the Great Vowel Shift

The long vowel spelled i (e.g., time) waspronounced [i:]. like was pronounced [li:k],much like English leak today.

The long vowel spelled ee was pronounced [e:].feet was pronounced [fe:t], a little like Englishfate today.

The long vowel spelled ea was pronouned [E].break was pronounced [brE:k], a little likeEnglish Breck today, but with the vowel drawnout purely in length.

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1400s: the 15th century

Battle of Agincourt, Joan of Arc, the fall ofConstantinople, Leonardo da Vinci, and 1492.

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1400s: the 15th century

Battle of Agincourt, Joan of Arc, the fall ofConstantinople, Leonardo da Vinci, and 1492./[i:/] as in crime became a diphthong, probably[Iy]: like, time, crime. The first part of thisdiphthong would become lower over thefollowing centuries.At around the same time, [e:] (as in feet) becamea long [i:] (but it did not get confused with theold [i:], which was no longer pronounced thatway); and [E:] was also raised, to take the placeof [e:]. So the old east, which had been [E:st], wasnow [e:st].

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1500s: the 16th century

The century of Henry VIII, Martin Luther, andQueen Elizabeth, and most of Shakespeare’s life.

The long vowel [a:], as in name [na:m@], nowbecame [æ:]. In the 1600s, around the time of theEnglish Revolution, it kept on moving, andbecame [E:]. Around the time of the AmericanRevolution, it became [e:], and by the time ofour Civil War, it shifted to become a diphthong:[ej].

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1500s: the 16th century

In the 1600s, English Revolutionary time, [Iy], asin crime, kept on changing – to become [@j]. Thatis a lowering of the first part of the vowel, andthat lowering has continued up to moderntimes; the pronunciation now begins with a verylow vowel: [aj].

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Chaucer

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Chaucer: The Friar’s Tale (end of 14century)

This worthy lymytour, this noble Frere,This worthy licensed beggar, this noble

FriarHe made alwey a maner louryng chiere

He always made a kind of scowling faceUpon the Somonour, but for honestee

At the Summoner, but for proprietyNo vileyns word as yet to hym spak he.

No churlish word as yet to him spoke he.source: Larry Benson.

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Chaucer: The Friar’s Tale (end of 14century)

But atte laste he seyde unto the wyf,But at the last he said to the wife,

“Dame,” quod he, ”God yeve yow rightgood lyf!

”My lady,” said he, ”God give you a rightgood life!

Ye han heer touched, also moot I thee,You have here touched, as I may prosper,

In scole-matere greet difficultee.On academic problems of great difficulty.

source: Larry Benson.29

Chaucer: The Friar’s Tale

Ye han seyd muche thyng right wel, I seye;You have said many things right well, I

say;But, dame, heere as we ryde by the weye,

But, my lady, here as we ride by the way,Us nedeth nat to speken but of game,

We need not speak of anything butpleasant matters,

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Chaucer: The Friar’s Tale

And lete auctoritees, on Goddes name,And leave authoritative texts, in God’s

name,To prechyng and to scoles of clergye.

To preaching and to the universities.

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Shakespeare: Troilus (1602)

Troilus: Call here my varlet, I’ll unarm again,Why should I war without the walls of Troy:That find such cruel battle here within?Each Trojan that is master of his heart,Let him to field, Troilus alas, hath none.Pandarus: Will this gear ne’er be mended?Troilus: The Greeks are strong and skillful to

their strengthFierce to their skill, and to their fierceness

valiant,But I am weaker then a woman’s tear;Tamer then sleep; fonder then ignorance,

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Shakespeare: Troilus

Troilus: Less valiant then the virgin in thenight,

And skilless as unpractised infancy:Pandarus: Well, I have told you enough of this;

for my part I’ll not meddle nor make nofarther; he that will have a cake out of thewheat must needs tarry the grinding.

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The Great Vowel Shift

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Great Vowel Shift1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 presentdriven i: Ii ei Ei 2i aihouse u: Uw ow Ow 2w awfeet e: i:fool o: u:beat E: e: i:foal O: o: @utake a: æ: E: e: eisail ai æi Ei e: eilaw aw 6w 6: O:

This nice graphic based on material from RaymondHickey, at www-uni-due.de, on Studying TheHistory of English.

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The Northern Cities region

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North America

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The United States

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The Northern Cities region

Also known as the Inland North

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History of migration

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Northern Cities vowel shift

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The Northern Cities vowel shift

A major shift in the vowel quality of severalshort vowels in American English.

Became more distinct after World War II, in theNorthern inland cities: Chicago, Detroit,Rochester, Cleveland.

Its antecedents already existed further east, inNew York, for example.

William Labov, the dean of sociolinguists in the20th century, has studied this system in greatdetail.

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Tense æ

It started with two slightly differentpronunciations of the vowel in cat and Sam.Instead of pronouncing them both with thesame vowel (c[æ]t, S[æ]m), many speakersthroughout the United States used a slightlyraised and slightly diphthongized form in Sam.This vowel is often described as tense, and is [e@]

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Tense æ

In fact, there was a phonological principledetermining where they used this vowel: e@isused when followed by an m or n (but not [N] =‘ng’) in the same syllable. The consonant thatprecedes is of no importance.

Sam sand sangse@m se@nd sæng

Different syllables:Pamela Canadapæm@l@ kæn@d@

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Tense æ

But then things started changing. In the Inlandarea—and this includes Chicago—æ changedunconditionally: everywhere there had been anæ, a tense e@was now used by many speakers,including in words like hat, cat, that, and atwhere this would not happen on the East Coast.

The other big change was that the vowel /a/ (asin block, top) started to move forward, and tookover the phonetic pronunciation [æ], which wasno longer being used for cat and hat.

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Conclusion 1

Linguists do not know much about the causes ofthe great changes in pronunciation of English,and other languages, over the decades.But for the last 200 years, linguists have beenable to document and infer an enormousamount of change, in both vowels andconsonants.The one great constancy in language is change.Each generation and each social group has theopportunity to add its particular twist to theway its language is pronounced, and often onegroup’s twist is adopted by all, or almost all, ofthe rest of the speakers.46

Conclusion 2

You can open your ears and hear vowels as theyreally are.

We hear and ignore a great deal of difference inthe way others speak our language. As thosedifferences add up, languages as a wholechange and evolve.

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