THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

The Great Vowel Shift

A major change in English that results in new phonemic representation of words and morphemes took place approximately between 1400 and 1600. It is known as the Great Vowel Shift . The seven long, or tense, vowels of Middle English underwent the following change (referred to Tabe A)

Table A

Shift		Example
Middle English	Modern English	Middle English	Modern English
[i:] 	[aj]	[mis] 	[majs] mice
[u:] 	[aw]	[mu:s]	[maws] mouse
[e:] 	[i:]	[ge:s]	[gi:s] geese
[o:] 	[u:]	[go:s]	[gu:s] goose

By diagramming the Great Vowel Shift on a vowel chart,, we can see that the high vowels became the diphthongs, while the long vowels underwent an increase in tongue hight, as if to fill in the space between vacated by the high vowels. In addition, [a:] was fronted to became [e:].

These changes are among the most dramatic examples of Regular Sound Shift . The phonemic representation of many thousands of words changed. Today, some reflection of this vowel shift is seen in alternating forms of morphemes in English :

please — pleasant; serene — serenity; sane — sanity; crime — criminal; sign — signal;divine — divinity ; fool — folly; nation — national and so on so forth.

Before the the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels were the same. Then the vowels in the second word of each pair were shortened by the Early Middle English Vowel Shortening rule. As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, which occurred later, affected only the first word in each pair. The second word, with its short vowels, was unaffected. This is why the vowels in the morphologically related words are pronounced differently today.