1. HoEL: The Great Vowel Shift10/28/2015 1.What is the Great Vowel Shift? 2. Why should we care about it? 3. Why did it happen? … not the Canadian band from Montréal

2. 1. What is it? The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of English that took place in England roughly between 1350 and 1800. Through the Great Vowel Shift, all Middle English long vowels changed their pronunciation. English spelling was becoming standardized in the 15 th and 16 th centuries, and the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling. Since English spelling was largely fixed in the 15 th and 16 th centuries, when the pronunciation of long vowels changed, the spelling of those words affected by the change became out of sync with the pronunciation: ride originally had a long pure vowel /i:/, but it became a diphthong /a ɪ /.

4. The major changes in the long vowels

7. Otto Jesperson’s 8 steps. Jesperson (1860-1943) was the Danish linguist who coined the term “Great Vowel Shift.”

8. Structural linguistics Language as a system consisting of relations of difference. If one element in the system changes, the other elements have to change to maintain the differences. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916)

9. 2. Why should we care about the Great Vowel Shift? a) It’s why we say /ma ʊ s/ not /mu:s/. Middle English long u /u:/, as in house, mouse became a diphthong /a ʊ /

10. Why care? b) It affects our understanding of literature, especially rhymes and puns, although rhyme evidence must be used with discretion: not all rhymes are meant to be exact. See Workbook, 7.9 and Algeo, p. 154 (Falstaff’s puns) for more examples. Jonathan Swift, Strephon and Chloe (1731) You’d swear that so divine a creature Felt no necessities of nature. Not a perfect rhyme today, but in 1731 it was /kret ɘ r/ and /net ɘ r/. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712) Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey Dost sometimes counsel take – and sometimes tea. / ɘ be/ and /te/

11. 3. Why did it happen? No-one really knows. Middle English long i /i:/ (as in riden) became diphthongized > / ɘ i/. Perhaps it was fashionable to pronounce it like that?