Vowel breaking · Lablypedia

Types

Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of another sound, by stress, or in no particular way.

Assimilation

Vowel breaking is sometimes defined as a subtype of diphthongization, when it refers to harmonic (assimilatory) process that involves diphthongization triggered by a following vowel or consonant.

The original pure vowel typically breaks into two segments. The first segment matches the original vowel, and the second segment is harmonic with the nature of the triggering vowel or consonant. For example, the second segment may be (a back vowel) if the following vowel or consonant is back (such as velar or pharyngeal), and the second segment may be (a front vowel) if the following vowel or consonant is front (such as palatal).

Thus, vowel breaking, in the restricted sense, can be viewed as an example of assimilation of a vowel to a following vowel or consonant.

Unconditioned

Vowel breaking is sometimes not assimilatory and is then not triggered by a neighboring sound. That was the case with the Great Vowel Shift in English in which all cases of and changed to diphthongs.

Stress

Vowel breaking sometimes occurs only in stressed syllables. For instance, Vulgar Latin open-mid and changed to diphthongs only when they were stressed.

2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

Indo-European languages

English

Vowel breaking is a very common sound change in the history of the English language, occurring at least three times (with some varieties adding more) listed here in reverse chronological order:

Geordie

In Geordie, the and vowels undergo an allophonic split, with the monophthongs , being used in morphologically-closed syllables (as in freeze , bruise ) and the diphthongs , being used in morphologically-open syllables word-finally (as in free , brew ) but also word-internally at the end of a morpheme (as in frees , brews ).

Most dialects of English turn , into diphthongs, and the monophthongal , are in free variation with the diphthongal , , particularly word-internally. Word-finally, diphthongs are more usual.

Southern American English

Vowel breaking is characteristic of the "Southern drawl" of Southern American English, where the short front vowels have developed a glide up to [j], and then in some areas back down to schwa: pat , pet , pit .

Non-rhotic dialects

The centering diphthongs of dialects like Received Pronunciation (RP) developed as a result of breaking before historic , which was subsequently deleted at the end of a syllable: near , square , cure .

Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift changed the long vowels to diphthongs, which became Modern English .

Old English īs > Modern English ice
Old English hūs > Modern English house

Middle English

In early Middle English, a vowel was inserted between a front vowel and a following (pronounced in this context), and a vowel was inserted between a back vowel and a following (pronounced in this context).

That is a prototypical example of the narrow sense of "vowel breaking" as described above: the original vowel breaks into a diphthong that assimilates to the following consonant, gaining a front before a palatal consonant and before a velar consonant.

Old English

In Old English, two forms of harmonic vowel breaking occurred: breaking and retraction and back mutation.

In prehistoric Old English, breaking and retraction changed stressed short and long front vowels i, e, æ to short and long diphthongs spelled io, eo, ea when followed by h or by r, l + another consonant (short vowels only), and sometimes w (only for certain short vowels):

Proto-Germanic *fallan > Anglo-Frisian *fællan > Old English feallan "fall"
PG *erþō > OE eorþe "earth"
PG *lizaną > OE liornian "learn"

In late prehistoric Old English, back mutation changed short front i, e, æ to short diphthongs spelled io, eo, ea before a back vowel in the next syllable if the intervening consonant was of a certain nature. The specific nature of the consonants that trigger back umlaut or block it varied from dialect to dialect.

Old Frisian

Old West Frisian exhibited several vowel breaking processes. One is a process called "Jorwert breaking" where long front vowels followed by w were converted into rising diphthongs. This means that , , and were converted into , , and , respectively. Sometimes the j was deleted if it followed an r.

In another process, called "late Old West Frisian breaking", consonant clusters where l preceded d, k, n, or r, the preceding e was lengthened, diphthongized, and stress shifted to the second syllable. This process can be seen in examples such as feld lengthening to fēld before breaking into fiēld; stress originally fell on the first syllable, then shifted to the final syllable.

German and Yiddish

The long high vowels of Middle High German underwent breaking during the transition to Early New High German: → . In Yiddish, the diphthongization affected the long mid vowels as well: →

MHG êwic → NHG ewig, Yiddish: אייביק‎, romanized: eybik ("eternal")
MHG hôch → NHG hoch, Yiddish: הויך‎, romanized: hoykh ("high")
MHG schœne → NHG schön, Yiddish: שיין‎, romanized: sheyn ("nice")
MHG snîden → NHG schneiden, Yiddish: שנײַדן, romanized: shnaydn ("to cut")
MHG vriunt → NHG Freund, Yiddish: פֿרײַנד‎, romanized: fraynd ("friend")
MHG hût → NHG Haut, Yiddish: הויט, romanized: hoyt ("skin")

This change started as early as the 12th century in Upper Bavarian and reached Moselle Franconian only in the 16th century. It did not affect Alemannic or Ripuarian dialects, which still retain the original long vowels.

In Yiddish, the diphthongization applied not only to MHG long vowels but also to in words of Hebrew (in stressed open syllables) or Slavic origin:

Hebrew: פסח, romanized: pésach → Yiddish: פּסח, romanized: peysekh ("Pesach")
Hebrew: מנורה, romanized: m'norá → Yiddish: מנורה, romanized: mnoyre ("menorah")
Old Czech: chřěn → Yiddish: כריין, romanized: khreyn ("chrain")
Polish: kosz → Yiddish: קויש, romanized: koysh ("basket")

Earlier, in Old High German, the West Germanic ō () and ē (, from Proto-Germanic ē₂) became diphthongs uo and ie in stressed syllables, a trait shared with Old Dutch (but not Old Saxon):

PWG *flōdu → OHG fluot, OD fluot (versus Old Saxon flōd) ("flow, flood")
PWG *hēr → OHG hier, OD hier (versus Old Saxon hēr) ("here")

Old Norse

Proto-Germanic stressed short e becomes ja or (before u) jǫ regularly in Old Norse except after w, r, l. Examples are:

PG *ek(a) "I" → (east) ON jak, Swedish jag, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål jeg, and Icelandic ek → ég (but Jutlandic æ, a, Nynorsk eg).
- Faroese has both. The standard form is eg, while the dialects of Suðuroy have jeg.
PG *hertōn "heart" → ON hjarta, Swedish hjärta, Faroese hjarta, Norwegian Nynorsk hjarta, Danish hjerte
PG *erþō "earth" → Proto-Norse *erþū → ON jǫrð, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian jord, Faroese jørð

According to some scholars, the diphthongisation of e is an unconditioned sound change, whereas other scholars speak about epenthesis or umlaut.

Faroese

Inherited Old Norse stressed long vowels and short a became diphthongs in open syllables in Modern Faroese: close and mid vowels became falling diphthongs ending in /i̯/ or /u̯/ (í/ý, ó, ú > /ʊiː, ɔuː~ɛuː, ʉuː/), but the open vowels a, æ (< Old Norse ǽ and é) and á (< Old Norse á and ǫ́) became floating diphthongs /ɛaː/ or /ɔaː/ respectively:

ON faðir → Faroese faðir "father" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Fêaïr, Fêajir.*
ON tré → Faroese træ "tree" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Trêa.*
ON ǽʀ → Faroese ær "ewe" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Êar.*
ON bátʀ → Faroese bátur "boat" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Baatur.
ON þú → Faroese tú "thou; you (sg.)" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography tû.
ON móðir → Faroese móðir "mother" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Mêuïr, Mêuür.*
ON íss → Faroese ísur "ice" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Ujsur.
ON ýsa → Faroese hýsa "haddock" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography Hujsa.

Note: Svabo notes the diphthongs êa, êu with circumflex over both letters: e᷍a, e᷍u.

Diphthongisation of ON í and ý /ʊi/ appears also in closed syllables; ON ó, ú in closed syllable lost its diphthongal character during the beginning of the 19th century:

ON hvítt → Faroese hvítt "white (n.)" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography kvujt, kvujtt.
ON nýtt → Faroese nýtt "new (n.)" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography nujt.
ON stórt → Faroese stórt "big (n.)" , cf. Svabo's 1773 orthography stêurt, størt, Schrøter's 1822 orthography stourt.

Scottish Gaelic

Vowel breaking is present in Scottish Gaelic with the following changes occurring often but variably between dialects: Archaic Irish Middle Irish pronunciation: → Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: and Archaic Irish → Scottish Gaelic Specifically, central dialects have more vowel breaking than others.

Romance languages

Many Romance languages underwent vowel breaking. The Vulgar Latin open vowels e and o in stressed position underwent breaking only in open syllables in French and Italian, but in both open and closed syllables in Spanish. Vowel breaking was mostly absent in Catalan, in which and became diphthongs only before a palatal consonant: Latin coxa 'thigh', octō 'eight', lectum 'bed' > Old Catalan , , . The middle vowel was subsequently lost if a triphthong was produced: Modern Catalan cuixa, vuit, llit (cf. Portuguese coxa, oito, leito). Vowel breaking was completely absent in Portuguese. The result of breaking varies between languages: e and o became ie and ue in Spanish, ie and uo in Italian and ie and eu in French.

In the table below, words with breaking are bolded.

Romanian

Romanian underwent the general Romance breaking only with , as it did not have :

Latin pellis > Romanian piele "skin"

It underwent a later breaking of stressed e and o to ea and oa before a mid or open vowel:

Latin porta > Romanian poartă "gate"
Latin flōs (stem flōr-) > Romanian floare "flower"

Sometimes a word underwent both forms of breaking in succession:

Latin petra > Early Romanian pietră > Romanian piatră "stone" (where ia results from hypothetical *iea)

The diphthongs that resulted from the Romance and the Romanian breakings were modified when they occurred after palatalized consonants.

Quebec French

In Quebec French, long vowels are generally diphthongized when followed by a consonant in the same syllable (even when a final [ʁ] is optionally made silent).

tard → ; but not in tardif (because short a)
père →
fleur → ; but not in fleuriste (long œ is at end of syllable)
fort → ; but not forte (short o)
autre → ; but not autrement (long o is at end of syllable)
neutre → ; but not neutralité (long ø is at end of syllable)
pince → ; or → ; but not pincer
onze → ; but not onzième

Proto-Indo-European

Some scholars believe that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) i, u had vowel-breaking before an original laryngeal in Greek, Armenian and Tocharian but that the other Indo-European languages kept the monophthongs:

PIE *gʷih₃wos → *gʷioHwos "alive" → Gk. ζωός zōós, Toch. B śāw-, śāy- (but Skt. jīvá-, Lat. vīvus)
PIE *protih₃kʷom → *protioHkʷom "front side" → Gk. πρόσωπον prósōpon "face", Toch. B pratsāko "breast" (but Skt. prátīka-)
PIE *duh₂ros → *duaHros "long" → Gk. δηρός dērós, Arm. *twār → erkar (Skt. dūrá-, Lat. dūrus).

However, the hypothesis has not been widely adopted.

Austronesian languages

Some languages in Sumatra have vowel breaking processes, almost exclusively in syllable-final position. In Minangkabau, the Proto-Malayic vowels *i and *u are broken to ia and ua before word-final *h, *k, *l, *ŋ, *r (*təlur > *təluar > talua "egg"). In Rejang, the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian vowels *ə, i, and u are broken to êa, ea, and oa before any of the word-final consonants mentioned above except *k and *ŋ (*tənur > *tənoar > tênoa "egg"). This process has been transphonologized by loss of *l and *r and merging of several word-final consonants into a glottal stop (*p, *t, *k in Minangkabau, or *k, *h in most dialects of Rejang except Kebanagung).

Word-final Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *-i and *-u were also broken in Sumatra. In Rejang, these vowels are broken into -ai and -au in Pesisir dialect, or into -êi and -êu elsewhere.

Although Acehnese is also spoken in Sumatra, the entire Chamic family has undergone vowel breaking separately. Final open *-i and *-u were broken in Proto-Chamic into *-ɛy and *-ɔw. However, they remained when closed by another consonant (final *-r was lost in native words). The following are the outcomes for the diphthongs:

Following its split from Proto-Chamic, several daughter languages have undergone further vowel breaking. In Acehnese, *a: normally became ɯə, but when preceded by a nasal, it became ɯ instead.