The Vowel Shift in Unstressed Syllables of Old English

Abstract

The historical vowel changes that took place in unstressed or weakly stressed syllables haven't been treated as operating methodically as those in stressed syllables. Even though the tendency for unstressed vowels to be shortened, if long, and reduced, or eliminated has long been noted as common to all Germanic languages and hence traceable in English throughout its history (Wyld , 1927: 272) no serious attempts have been made to account for the exact phonetic realization of vowel reduction processes. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that unstressed vowels were not reduced variously or all suddenly, but systematically and regularly, to [ə] before loss, via two stages weakening and centralization thus unstressed vowels were first weakened, and then these weakened vowels were in turn centralized to [ə] before loss.