The Origins of the Great Vowel Shift

Finka Cyntia Heynemann THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT Introduction The Great Vowel Shift is a process of sound change that is very widely described in various texts about the history of the English language. This should not be a surprise as it was undoubtedly a major factor determining how the English language looks (or better said – sounds) like now. The mechanism of this change and its influence seem to be covered sufficiently. Even if there are still debates on its details ongoing, the impact of GVS on the present phonology system is quite clear. However, most texts focus on GVS’s impact rather than on the origins of this process. Some researchers only mention that GVS was a sequence of events that didn’t happen overnight and took place somewhere in between the fifteenth and seventeenth century I.e.: Pyles, T. &Algeo, J. The Origins and Development of the English Language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. P. 173.. This does not answer the question: why did the GVS take place? What had to happen before for this process to start? What has triggered it? The aim of this text is to discuss various ideas of what was necessary for GVS to happen. Division of reasons The reasons for sound change in general can be divided into two large groups. One are social reasons – anything that is connected to people as a community. This would include everything like meeting of two nations or adaptation to a higher social class. The second group are reasons that deal with people as individuals and, to be precise, with their anatomy. There are many tendencies in the language that make it constantly change. Speakers tend, for example, to simplify their speech. It is only one of many other language mechanisms that make the language not static but dynamic. This is reflected not only in syntax or grammar, but also in pronunciation. If there is any change in one particular sound, it is easy to predict that it will affect other sounds as to make a word easier to pronounce. The position of articulatory organs producing one sound has a great influence of the preceding and following sounds as well. Therefore one change can trigger another as a consequence of how the articulatory organ is constructed. Both these groups of reasons have one thing in common. One has always to remember that sound change does not happen just as it is, without any relation to speakers. Some writers tend to explain how sound change or any other linguistic mechanisms work, but fail to acknowledge that all these sounds are not living beings. Vowels and consonants cannot be touched or seen. It is also not entirely correct to give them characteristics that would make them more personal. Sounds shouldn’t be described as subjects but as objects. They cannot “do” anything by themselves like people do, however, they can be perceived when written or spoken. Of course, as the topic is about changes in sounds, the term “spoken” is more relevant. All this may occur as obvious, but it has to be made clear that any attempt to describe sound change without relating to human beings who are producing them is wrong. Why not extra- and intralinguistic reasons as a category? In some texts (i.e. Smith Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. P. 89.) reasons for GVS are divided into extralinguistic and intralinguistic. This division, however, does not really reflect the relation between sounds and speakers. The intralinguistic category seems to be too theoretical. The description of sound change without any relation to pronunciation mechanisms is not complete. When, for example, focusing on the vowel triangle and giving reasons why sounds shift there, it can be easily forgotten that there is more to vowels than a written model in a book. When using terms like extra- and intralinguistic, a separation between practice and theory is being made. Therefore in this text another set of terms will be used – social reasons and articulatory reasons. They both cover almost the same things as the extra- and intralinguistic terms, however, they seem to be more appropriate as to show the relation between sounds and their speakers. The social change There are some historical facts that seem to correlate with the beginnings ofGVS. However, not every historical event has its reflection in sound or language change. To investigate this matter further it is necessary to look at various theories about sound and language change in general and how they spread. The two probably most known and oldest theories, August Schleicher’s Family-tree-theory and Johannes Schmidt’s Wave Theory, have something in common. They both require people to interact with each other in order for a language change to take place. Sound changes occur when people using different languages or pronunciations meet. It is then when phenomena like borrowings or adaptations can be observed. Without social interaction with people speaking differently, for example if a certain community is quite closed, the language stays mostly preserved and its development is not that dynamic. This was mentioned because it helps to choose and take into consideration those events that could lead to the triggering of GVS. These had to be mostly long-term events where not only people interacted with each other but where the interaction took place between people speaking differently in some way. It is not, of course, the only determinant needed for a sound change in general to occur – other aspects, as geographical placement, are relevant as well. Nonetheless, even if thereason for a sound change is to be found in people moving places, it is not the moving itself that is of importance but, as said previously, the interaction between those who moved and those who have already occupied a certain place. As far as GVS is concerned, there was a process ongoing that fits into the above description of social interaction. What is meant is the urbanisation and development of London as a city and people moving to London (they can be named as “Descendants of Chaucer” or “System I” users – the higher social class, and aspiring citizens, “System II” users Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. P. 98.). It may be considered as a number of related events – urbanisation in general, people moving into London and meeting those speaking differently. However, it is hard to separate these events from each other and describe them independently, mostly because it was a process. They should not be interpreted as linear because all this happened simultaneously in a longer period of time. The most important question is what has happened when the differently speaking groups met in London. Analysing social behaviour it is easy to conclude, that people tended to speak as much similar as the group they perceived as most prestigious. Barber explains: “The change from one style of pronunciation to the other perhaps reflects social change. As merchants and aspiring citizens moved up into the gentry, they perhaps brought some of their pronunciations with them” Barber, C. Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. P. 108.. This, however, does not explain why there was a shift. If these aspiring citizens had just brought their pronunciation, there would not have been a shift of vowels, but a replacement and scientists would talk about the Great Vowel Replacement. Evidence rather shows that there was no replacement and what happened is that new citizens, trying to imitate vowels produced by the higher social class, pronounced them incorrectly. This leads to what is better called a shift. The “new” phonemes have not replaced those that were before. Precisely, as this imitating way of pronouncing became more and more popular, the higher class shifted their vowel system. It is rather easy to explain what happened to the previous pronunciation by pure logic. As the higher class was notably not really numerous (and got even smaller after the Black Death) the incoming citizens became majority, thus it was their way of pronunciation that could spread and establish the norm. Moreover, the higher class was not a closed community, remaining in interaction with the lower class. It was impossible for them to stay distinct from the incomers.Slowly but surely they had to incorporate the more and more popular new pronunciation in their own phonetic system Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. P. 92.. Of course this is just a hypothesis. People where somehow aware of the changes going on but not on a level that would enable them to answer (or even ask) the question “Why are we currently undergoing the Great Vowel Shift?”. As suggested above, the shift was triggered by incomers to the city of London who wanted to imitate the pronunciation of the higher social class. This willingness should be understandable but there is another question forming as to why they failed to imitate the sounds correctly. Focusing on articulatory possibilities may be helpful in understanding it. Articulatory reasons Imitating a sound can be more difficult than one may expect it to be. It is quite easy to produce a sound that is already familiar to the speaker on the contrary to unknown sounds. That is because when humans reach a certain age, that is about 15 years, they auditory and articulatory organs adapt to what they already are used to Moyer, A. Age, Accent and Experience in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, Sydney: Multilingual Matters LTD, 2004. P. 18, 24-25. . This is why children who were exposed to a second language in early childhood will speak it without a foreign accent. A native speaker will not be able to hear the difference between the speech of the bilingual (or multilingual) speaker and another native in matters of accent. The older the speaker, the more they become unable to distinguish unknown sounds in other languages and/or are they unable to produce them. Such speaker can reach native proficiency, but a native speaker will be able to tell that this person is not a native because of the differences in pronunciation. The articulatory organs are not that flexible in later adolescence so even if a person hears the difference between sounds it can be impossible for them to produce it properly. This is relevant for GVS. Aspiring citizens tried to produce sounds they perceived as prestigious. However, they failed to reproduce them. Firstly, they possibly could tell particular vowels are higher, but could not place the sound correctly as it was new in their phonological system. Secondly, the sound possibly altered in their minds. This means, they heard the sound and tried to remember it. This is not that easy and the audial image of a sound changes quickly. Thirdly, even if the remembered sound was correct, those citizens failed to reproduce it correctly or even realise they pronunciation differed from the higher class’ pronunciation. This however, does not explain everything. For the long vowels to be raised there had to be space for them, so that they would not overlap. Scientists argue about what had happened: “The process that probably set the shift in motion was the diphthongization of the high vowels /ῑ/ and /ῡ/, for which there is good spelling evidence from the late 15th century onwards” Nevalainen, T. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. P. 121.. This means that words such as “life” or “house” started to be pronounced in the way that is similar to now. This would mean that the [i] and [u] sounds, which are very easy to pronounce and natural, were not used. Nevalainen states: “The diphthongization of high vowels in words like ‘time’ and ‘house’ left the space for high vowels unoccupied” Nevalainen, T. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. P. 121.. This description seems not to cover the problem entirely. As said previously, sounds are not living beings and it is not that they fill unoccupied spaces because they want to – they cannot see the free space. It also does not mean that speakers realise there is an empty space in the vowel triangle so they start using vowels that fill this space. What is more, it is unclear, if the diphthongization happened before GVS or maybe if it was a component of the shift, happening simultaneously: “The raising of /̄ē/ and /ō/ began in the fifteenth century, almost parallel to the diphthongization of /ῑ/and /ῡ/. In fact, scholars continue to argue which of the two was earlier, and whether the shift involved a pull chain (diphthongization first, as described above) or a push chain (raising first, ‘pushing’ the high vowels /ῑ/ and /ῡ/ out of the way, forcing them to diphthongize)” Nevalainen, T. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. P. 122.. Still, it should not be spoken of vowels pushing each other – they cannot push anything because they are just sounds. It is about speakers who start using another set of vowels. This is why two other reasons seem to be more appealing as triggering the shift: the loss of final –e and the Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening. While the process itself is widely described by Smith Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. P. 98.it has to be made clear that not MEOSL was responsible for the shift, but its result which was the phonemicisation of some vowels. This was again described very clearly by Smith. What has to be added is that when phonemicisation occurs, people tend to compensate it in their speech. A distinction has to be made so that words with affected sounds are still understandable. That is why a shift could be triggered – so that a distinction is created between words that started to sound the same. Of course this is another type of event that cannot be described as punctual. It was a process and people probably were not really aware of it. This means people have not deliberately heightened their long vowels to make them distinct. Still, speakers need to adapt their speech to any change that happens so that the speech remains clear. That is why tendencies like vowels heightening can be observed. Different shifts As Nevalainen states: “It was not, however, a uniform process leading to the standard RP system, but rather a series of local developments that only looks like an orderly chain shift when approached at a higher level of abstraction” Nevalainen, T. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. P. 120..It is clear that GVS was not a single event, but a process and, what is more, a process that took place not only in London. Smith gives a detailed explanation to what happened exactly to trigger shifts in various geographical points Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York:Routledge, 1998. P. 98.. Still, even if the various shifts proceeded differently and the output was slightly different, the reasons have some characteristics in common. Sound changes are triggered by contact with other speakers in general (that means i.e. “Descendants of Chaucer” and immigrants in London) or by previous sound changes (i.e. MEOSL, loss of final –e). In general, it can be described shortly as contact, phonemicisation, adaptation, compensation in length – all of which are social or articulatory reasons, which cannot be analysed without relation to speakers. Conclusion The reasons for GVS were described in minute detail by some scientist and even if some of them can be argued it is hard to add anything new to this topic. However, an addition needs to be made - reasons for GVS are not just theoretical. This counts not only to this particular sound change but to sound and language change in general. There are speakers that need to adapt their speech to new circumstances. There are people doing it, not sounds. This happens, of course, mostly without the speakers’ awareness but still one has to remember that sound change has to be analysed in relation to speakers, their social situation and their anatomic (articulatory and auditory) predispositions. Sound changes have to be considered not just in a theoretical approach but with sociolinguistic, anatomical and speech development knowledge in the background. Bibliography: Barber, C. Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Barber, C. The English Language. A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Jones, C. A History of English Phonology. London: Longman, 1989. Moyer, A. Age, Accent and Experience in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, Sydney: Multilingual Matters LTD, 2004. Nevalainen, T. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Pyles, T. &Algeo, J. The Origins and Development of the English Language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Smith, J. An Historical Study of English. Function, Form and Change. London and New York:Routledge, 1998. Strang, B.M.H. A History of English. London: Methuen, 1989. 5