PHONETIC PROCESSES IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: MAIN TRENDS AND CONSEQUENCES TO THE PRESENT

Abstract

The article investigates the major phonetic processes that have shaped the English phonological system across its three main periods (Old English, Middle English, and Modern English) and traces the living consequences of those changes in contemporary standard pronunciation. The central argument is that English phonology is not a random accumulation of isolated shifts, but a coherent, systemic reorganisation driven by the interplay of internal phonological pressures and external socio-historical forces. The study analyses four processes: the Pre-Germanic consonant shift described by Grimm’s Law (c. 1st millennium BCE), the significant vowel shift of the Middle English period culminating in the Great Vowel Shift (c. 1400-1700 CE), the simplification of consonant clusters and the emergence of silent letters during the medieval era, and the phonologisation of fricatives triggered by Franco-Norman language contact after 1066. The methodology combines diachronic phonological analysis with elements of sociolinguistics and historical dialectology. The article argues that each major wave of change left sedimentary traces in Present-Day English: in the persistent mismatch between spelling and pronunciation, in morphophonological alternations visible in word pairs such as /naɪf/~/naɪvz/ or /ˈdɪvɪn/~/dɪˈvɪnɪti/, and in the ongoing simplification of the diphthong system recorded in contemporary Received Pronunciation. By foregrounding the cumulative, stratified nature of these changes, the article offers a theoretically grounded framework for understanding why modern English phonology is simultaneously conservative in its orthography and innovative in its spoken realisation.