Great Vowel Shift

A series of phonetic changes occurring in Early Modern English in which the Middle English low and mid long vowels were raised, (ä) and (ō) becoming (ā) and (o͞o), for example, while the high long vowels (ē) and (o͞o) became the diphthongs (ī) and (ou).

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Great Vowel Shift

(Phonetics & Phonology) linguistics a phonetic change that took place during the transition from Middle to Modern English, whereby the long vowels were raised (eː became iː, oː became uː, etc). The vowels (iː) and (uː) underwent breaking and became the diphthongs (aɪ) and (aʊ)

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Great′ Vow′el Shift′

a series of changes in the quality of the long vowels between Middle and Modern English as a result of which all were raised, while the high vowels (ē) and (o̅o̅), already at the upper limit, underwent breaking to become the diphthongs (ī) and (ou).

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sound shift

References in periodicals archive ?

There are detailed descriptions of each historical period of English, with specific areas in each time period, such as the Great Vowel Shift, chosen for detailed study.

English historical linguistics; an international handbook; v.1

Quiz of the Day ANSWERS: 1 Australia - the Great Barrier Reef; 2 Rouen; 3 Mycroft; 4 X and y; 5 He ran in bare feet; 6 British Airways and Air France; 7 Tamla Records (Motown); 8 The Great Vowel Shift; 9 In the eye; 10 Maureen Connolly.

Quiz of the Day

The resulting monophthongs became the input to the diphthongisation rule, a part of the Great Vowel Shift. On the basis of forty-nine Middle English poetic texts from the Chadwyck-Healey online corpus un effort is made here to establish temporal and dialectal conditioning of the change.

The monophthongisation of diphthongs before dorsal fricatives: a corpus study

His biggest strength is his systematic, sequential approach, reminiscent of a skilled detective following clues to reach a solution, which one can see best in the treatment of Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL), the developments of the front vowels (notably Vowels 3, 4, and 8) within the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) complex and the Scottish Vowel Length rule (SVLR), covering developments vowel by vowel, environment by environment, resolutely and doggedly.

A. Jack Aitken, Older Scottish Vowels

In academic circles, this progression is frequently called "the great vowel shift."

Whither English?: Language Shifts With Cultural Changes

It is not, however, an academic text, so it is inevitable that some subjects, such as the Great Vowel Shift - a fifteenth century phenomenon in which long vowels came to be pronounced with greater elevation of the tongue so they sound more like we would pronounce today -are skimmed over when they are critical to understanding the development of English.

BOOKS: Minding your language; The Adventure of English: 500AD -2000AD: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg, Hodder and Stoughton, pounds 20. Reviewed by Jayne Howarth

Inicialmente, Fennell no tiene en cuenta esta distincion, no plantea su origen distintivo en ingles antiguo --el cual se ofrece como /e:/ y /E/ para una unica vocal cerrada /e:/ en ingles medio--, ni su importancia para el desarrollo posterior del Great Vowel Shift, cuando ME /e:/ > EModE /i:/, y ME /E:/ > EModE /e:/ > /i:/ o /ee/ (98-99).

Fennell, Barbara A. 2001: A History of English. A Sociolinguistic Approach

In between Chaucer and Shakespeare came that perplexing phenomenon, The Great Vowel Shift. These are the kinds of cliches which students already retail tirelessly in their essays.

A Way with Words: The Language of English Renaissance Literature

Through the workings of the Great Vowel Shift, original Middle Scots (and Middle English) /[epsilon]: generally rose to Modern Scots (and Modern English) /i(:)/.

A possible etymology for Scots Smirr 'traces of rain in the wind.'

He ends with the Great Vowel Shift, a change that created our modern pronunciation and destroyed phonetic spelling.

A linguistic introduction to the history and structure of the English lexicon

This term was introduced by Wells (1982: 256) to refer to the most recent ongoing developments associated with the Great Vowel Shift in which these diphthongs/i:, u:, ei, ou, ai, au/show continuing movement of their first elements, beyond those reached by RP, so:

The historical sociolinguistics of elite accent change: on why RP is not disappearing

The dating of the Great Vowel Shift seems inexplicably early, the account of medieval French stress is probably oversimplified, and the use of the term 'perfective' is incorrect.