The Great Vowel Shift explained

The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was a major change in the pronunciation of English vowels that took place between 1350 and 1700. It is one of the features that clearly separates Middle English from Modern English.

Because English spelling was becoming standardised as the GVS was in progress, the GVS is partly responsible for many peculiarities in English spelling. It is the reason why the spelling of many English vowels doesn't match up with the equivalent vowels in neighbouring European languages.

The GVS didn't happen overnight; nor did it happen everywhere at the same time. It's not as if everyone in England woke up one morning, speaking in a completely different way to how they spoke the previous night. Instead, the GVS was a series of chain shifts that affected the Middle English long vowels. Although some short vowels have also changed in pronunciation since Middle English, these changes are not considered to be part of the GVS.

Dissecting the vowels – the mechanics of the GVS

Middle English had seven long vowels which were arranged like this. A word containing the vowel in question is given underneath the IPA symbol. Note that none of the words match up with their present day pronunciations:

i:                      u:

time             mouse

 e:                    o:

see               moon

  ɛ:                   ɔ:

 east             stone

            a:

        name


æi      ɑʊ

say   law


Listen to this clip here to get an idea of how these vowels were pronounced before the GVS began to take place. I’d definitely recommend it if you’re unfamiliar with IPA.

As my crudely-drawn diagram shows, the first change to occur was the breaking of the high vowels /i:/ and /u:/, starting somewhere between 1400-1500 AD. By about 1600, they were now pronounced [əi] and [əu] respectively (listen here). At the same time, or possibly a little later, [a:] moved forwards to [æ:]. To get an idea of what the shift from [a:] to [æ:] sounds like, think of someone from Northern England pronouncing cart, then imagine the same person saying cat, but holding the vowel for longer than usual. You should be able to tell that the vowel has moved further forwards in the mouth.

Now that a gap has been created where the high vowels /i:/ and /u:/ once were, the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/ moved upwards to [i:] and [u:] respectively to fill the gap (stage 2 on the diagram). In effect, they have been pulled upwards. This stage was complete by about 1500. Soon after, /ɛ:/ and /ɔ:/ joined in the pull chain by shifting upwards to [e:] and [o:], filling the gap that was left behind (stage 4).

The /æ:/ in name and the /æi/ in day then moved upwards to [ɛ:] (stage 5) filling up the empty space left as a result of the previous stage of the chain shift. Although there is no low long vowel to take the place of /ɔ:/, another vowel sound shifts to fill the gap. The vowel in words such as law was once a diphthong [ɑʊ] (much the same as the vowel in out today). It was smoothed to [ɔ:] soon after original /ɔ:/ in stone was pulled upwards to [o:].

This is the first chain shift of the GVS completed, but the vowels aren’t done yet! A further chain shift took place from about 1600-1700. /e:/, which by this stage is found in words spelled with <ea> such as meat, moves up to [i:] (stage 6). This causes a merger between meat and meet. Once again, /ɛ:/ (now in words such as late) fills the gap that has been left behind, moving up to [e:].

The major chain shifts are now complete, but there are a few further changes still to go. The diphthongs /əi/ and /əu/ change to [ʌɪ] and [ɑʊ] in the 1700s, before changing to their modern pronunciations of [aɪ] and [aʊ] a little later.

Also, the long mid vowels [e:] and [o:] have become diphthongs in most dialects of English, including RP and General American. Name and stone are pronounced [eɪ] and [oʊ] or [əʊ], although they are still pronounced as long vowels in many American dialects and also in Yorkshire and Scotland.

Now let's look at the present day pronunciation of the Middle English long vowels and diphthongs to see how the pronunciation of these vowels has changed since the Great Vowel Shift:

 i:                                     u:
see, east                       moon

  eɪ                               oʊ, əʊ
 name, say                     stone

                                       ɔ:
                                     law

aɪ                                  aʊ
time                              mouse

Exceptions to the Great Vowel Shift

Although sound changes tend to be regular, not all words underwent certain phases of the GVS. For example, <ea> did not take the final step to [iː] in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear, and bear. The presence of [r] in swear and bear caused the vowel quality to be retained, but not in all cases. After all, bear no longer rhymes with fear, which did shift upwards. 

Other exceptions are father and rather, which failed to become [ɛː], and broad, which failed to become [oʊ]. The word room, which was spelled as roum in Middle English, retains its Middle English pronunciation, so it is an exception to the shifting of /uː/ to [aʊ]. This is because it is followed by /m/, a labial consonant. Another example is soup, whose movement to [aʊ] was blocked by the final /p/, also a labial consonant.

Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further complications. <ea> is again a good example, shortening commonly before dental or alveolar consonants such as <t>, <d> and <th>. So we have words such as dead, head, threat, wealth, read (past tense) etc, which no longer rhyme with deal, heal, weak and reap. 

Soon after the GVS, <oo> was shortened from [uː] to [ʊ] in a few words such as blood and flood. When /ʊ/ moved forwards to [ʌ] in the South of England, these words were taken with it. Think of how the word cup is pronounced in the North of England compared to how it's pronounced in the South to get an idea of the difference between [ʊ] and [ʌ].

Some time later, probably in the early 1700's, many instances of /u:/ were shortened again to [ʊ], especially before /k/, /d/ and less commonly, /t/. As a result, book, foot and good do not rhyme with root, mood and goose even though the vowels were once identical.

Conclusion

Although this is a very brief article, I hope that you have come away knowing a little bit more about the fascinating series of sound changes known as the Great Vowel Shift. 

Verbing your nouns: does it weird language?

Following a recent Facebook discussion I had with my sister and her friend, I decided to write a little article on the phenomenon of turning nouns into verbs, or 'verbing' nouns. As a Calvin and Hobbes fan, I cannot go any further without first posting this little gem:

Leaving Bill Watterson’s genius aside, can we really make language a complete impediment to understanding by creating new verbs from nouns? My answer is a resounding 'no.'

The English language lends itself to easy conversion of word classes (or ‘parts of speech’, to use a more familiar term). One reason is that English has very few obligatory endings that add extra information to the word. Linguists call these word endings ‘inflections’.

In languages such as Latin, Greek, German, Russian, Finnish and Turkish, certain forms of all verbs, nouns and (in the case of Latin, Greek and Russian) adjectives have an obligatory ending that provides more information about the role of that word in the sentence.

English still has a handful of noun and verb inflections. We have –s, which marks the third person singular, present tense in verbs and the plural number in nouns, the possessive -‘s suffix in nouns and the –ed past tense inflection. However, most verbs in English have no inflectional suffixes at all.

In the sentence ‘I love you’, we know that ‘love’ is a verb purely from its position in the sentence. There are no suffixes in the word ‘love’ to indicate that it is a verb. Indeed, ‘love’ can also be used as a noun: ‘where is the love?’ In Latin, however, nouns and verbs have a different set of inflectional suffixes so it is easier to tell these two word classes apart.

Also, to convert a word from one class to another in a language such as Latin, you must add or modify a suffix to change the word class. This is known as ‘derivation’. Consider these examples: 

puer 'boy' > puerilis 'boyish, childish' (noun to adjective)

amō 'I love' > amor 'love' (verb to noun)

fūmus 'smoke' > fūmō 'I smoke' (noun to verb)

In Latin, you cannot simply change the class of a word without first modifying or adding a suffix.

English does have some derivational suffixes that change the word class:

Boy > boyish (noun to adjective)

Dark > darkness (adjective to noun)

Decide > decision (verb to noun)

But there are numerous examples where no derivational suffix is added. The following examples are all well-established noun/verb pairs which are identical in form:

Turn > turn (verb to noun)

 ‘Take a turn for the worse’ (noun)

Push > push (verb to noun)

‘One last push’ (noun)

Fish > fish (noun to verb)

‘She went to the river to fish for trout’ (verb)

Lord > lord (noun to verb)

‘To lord it over’ (verb)

Eye > eye (noun to verb)

‘I’m eyeing up this delicious cake’ (verb)

The linguistic term for the creation of a new word from an existing word of a different word class without any change in form is conversion or zero derivation. This is very common in English, due to the fact that we don't have much derivational morphology.

English is more similar to Chinese than Latin in that it has very few inflections and productive derivational suffixes. I am sure it is no coincidence that in Chinese, as in English, nouns and verbs are freely converted with no suffixes added.

A deeper point to be made is that, contrary to what we might have been taught in school, the distinction between different word classes is, in some cases, very flimsy. We may have been taught that nouns belong in one category, verbs belong in another category and never the twain shall meet.1 But this is incorrect. The truth is that most (all?) languages frequently create new words from a related word belonging to a different word class. While Latin has to add a derivational suffix to mark the word class, English doesn’t always do so.

Rather than seeing nouns and verbs as two discrete categories, we should instead think of a scale or continuum, with the most noun-like words at one end of the scale and the most verb-like words at the other end. In English (and other languages), we have verbal nouns, e.g. ‘I enjoy playing football’ which function as nouns despite having a verb-like meaning. It’s not so much that we have distinct nouns and verbs. Instead, there are roots and you can do either nouny or verby things to them.

In the case of ‘fish’, ‘lord’ and ‘eye’, we can see that the tendency to create verbs from nouns has a long pedigree in English.

Very often, a ‘verbed’ noun fills a void in the language and helps to make certain expressions shorter and more economical. Saying ‘text me’ avoids the clunky expression ‘send me a text’. A century ago, people were using ‘telegram’ as a verb in the same way.

It’s even possible to verb the most un-verblike of nouns, often for humorous effect. Consider this line from Richard II, which shows how Shakespeare managed to ‘verb’ even such a noun as uncle:

Henry IV: My gracious uncle—
Edmund of Langley: Tut, tut! Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle:
 I am no traitor’s uncle...

So now we’ve determined that conversion from a noun to a verb is well-established and very common in English, I will now look at why there is so much opposition to the creation of new verbs from nouns. I will address three common objections to the verbification of nouns:

• Concern that it will lead to jargon

It seems that a number of verbs have been created from nouns for no good reason. What’s the purpose of saying ‘I’ll action it’ when ‘I’ll do it’ is just fine? Why do we need to dialogue when we can talk? What’s the point in authoring a book when it is simpler to write it?

I’ll grant that people who are concerned about this are absolutely right, and have every reason to object to the creation of verbs from nouns when there is already an equivalent, shorter verb that’s used in everyday language. 

The sole purpose of creating new verbs from nouns when there is an existing, commonly used verb already in place seems to be an attempt to add a level of formality. It's as if polysyllabic Latinate verbs are somehow more impressive than their normal everyday equivalents. The underlying problem here is the creation of long words for the sake of having long words. Verbing nouns is one way of creating jargon by deriving long words from shorter roots, but it’s not the ultimate problem.

• Verbing nouns is ungrammatical. 

We’ve already established that conversion between different word classes is very common in English and has been for a long time. There is nothing ungrammatical about using ‘turn’, ‘push’ and ‘love’ as both a noun and a verb, so what’s inherently different about using ‘text’ and ‘email’ as a verb? Or 'inbox'? 

As humans, we like to cut corners whenever possible, and this desire to be economical spills over into the way we use language. ‘I’ll text you’ is much shorter and more economical than saying ‘I’ll send you a text’. To claim that this is ungrammatical reflects an imperfect understanding of English grammar.

The author of a blog that I read this week objected to the phrase 'inbox me'. He claimed that it was curt and unfriendly, compared to the equivalent phrase 'drop me an email'. He attributed the curtness of the phrase to the fact that there is a verb derived from a noun; 'inbox.' I would agree that 'inbox me' is curt, but that's simply because it's shorter than 'drop me an email'. It's a matter of style, not a matter of verbing nouns.

• The English language will degenerate into an incomprehensible mess. 

This particular fear is based on a misunderstanding that nouns and verbs are two entirely separate categories, and mixing them is a new idea that will ruin our language if left unchecked. As I’ve explained, conversion is nothing new, and it certainly hasn’t done our language any harm yet. There are several reasons why languages die, but the conversion of nouns into verbs is not one of them!

Now, I don’t deny that there are some neologisms that are unnecessary and an impediment to understanding. However, ‘inbox me’ is no less understandable than ‘drop me an email’. It might not be pretty, but it is shorter and more economical than ‘drop me an email’. It’s simply a matter of style. Compare this to ‘I’ve actioned it’, which is longer and less economical than ‘I’ve done it’. Even so, 'action' as a verb is perfectly understandable. It's just unnecessary.

We should be aiming for clarity in written English. Trends and fads in the spoken language come and go, but we should aim to make our writing clear and understandable for everyone. It’s a good idea to avoid recent coinages until they’ve become well established in the language. Clarity also means avoiding jargon, so we should take care to avoid words that are used in a way that might be unfamiliar to most people.

However, I reject the idea that deriving verbs from nouns is damaging the English language in any way. The fact that we can easily convert words from one word class to another is actually a strength of the English language, not a weakness. Deriving verbs from nouns is nothing new, and although some new coinages won’t last the distance, many of them probably will.

Let’s embrace the useful new set of de-nouned verbs that have become part of our language, while taking care to avoid jargon. Verbing doesn’t weird language, for language itself is weird. And extremely fascinating.

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Footnote 1 - The distinction between two word classes breaks down completely in some languages. In Chinese, verbs and adjectives are not really distinct from each other at all. ‘He is happy’ translates literally as ‘he happies.’ Here, ‘happy’ is best regarded as a kind of verb, not an adjective.


Addendum: Although any noun can, in theory, be verbed, the converted verbs that tend to last are those that fill a void in the language and serve a useful purpose. Although 'Facebook' and 'Google' are not at all verb-like as nouns, their conversion into a verb is likely to be part of our language for as long as Facebook and Google exist because their verbification is economical. 'Google it' is so much simpler to say than 'look it up on Google'.