Morfosintassi Inglese 2, Piotti
Facts about English.
Studying variation/language change in the history of English an in PDE
Type of language change in English
➢ Phonological change
➢ Morphological change
➢ Morpho-syntactic change
➢ Syntactic change
➢ Semantic change
➢ Lexical change
Phonological change
➢ Sporadic VS Regular
➢ Unconditioned VS Continioned
Consonant cluster reduction (unconditioned):
OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ > ME /l-/, /r-/, /n-/ > PDE
OE /gn-/, /kn/ > ME /n-/ > PDE
Hlaf ‘loaf’ > loaf
Hraefn ‘raven’ > raven
Hnecca ‘neck’ > neck
Hnut ‘nut’ > nut
Gnat, knife > ME /n-/ but spelling is not affected.
Most important unconditioned phonological change → Great Vowel Shift (GVS) (15th century-17th century) → ME
long vowels.
One of the reasons behind inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation in PDE.
