Welcome to Changes in Pronunciation (Phonology)
Welcome to your revision guide for phonological change in English! This topic sits squarely within Component 1, Section B: Variation over Time of the Edexcel A Level English Language specification (9EN0). In this exam section, you will analyse two thematically linked historical texts (dating from c1550 to the present day) for 30 marks, comparing how language has evolved across time.
Don't worry if historical sound changes feel daunting at first. Because we cannot hear people from the 16th, 17th, or 18th centuries speaking, studying historical pronunciation might seem like detective work. However, by understanding a few key principles, sound shifts, and theoretical models, you will be able to unlock high marks in AO1 (Linguistic Methods), AO2 (Concepts and Theories), AO3 (Context), and AO4 (Textual Connections).
1. The Basics: What is Phonology?
Before looking at historical changes, let's establish the foundational linguistic terminology you must use in your exam essays:
• Phonology: The study of the sound system of a language and how sounds function, combine, and change patterns over time.
• Phoneme: The smallest distinctive unit of sound in a language that distinguishes one word from another (for example, swapping the phoneme /p/ for /b/ turns pat into bat). Modern standard English utilizes approximately 44 phonemes (12 pure vowels, 8 diphthongs, and 24 consonants).
• Grapheme-to-Phoneme Correspondence: The relationship between written letter symbols (graphemes) and spoken sounds (phonemes). In English, this relationship is notoriously irregular because pronunciation has changed drastically over the centuries while spelling has remained largely frozen since early standardisation.
Quick Review Box:
Always remember that orthography refers to the written spelling system, while phonology refers to the spoken sound system. A text's spelling often gives us clues about historical pronunciation, but spelling and sound are two distinct linguistic levels!
2. Major Historical Phonological Changes (c1550 to Present)
English pronunciation has never stood still. Here are the central historical sound shifts you should look for when analysing Early Modern and Late Modern English texts.
A. The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) (c. 1400–1750)
The Great Vowel Shift was a massive, systemic series of changes in the pronunciation of English long vowels.
• What happened? All Middle English long vowels were raised in the mouth (the tongue moved to a higher position). Long vowels that were already as high as they could go in the vocal tract (/iː/ and /uː/) became diphthongs (two vowel sounds pronounced together in one syllable).
• Concrete Examples: Middle English time (pronounced */tiːm/, sounding like modern teem) shifted to modern /taɪm/. Middle English house (pronounced */huːs/, sounding like modern hoose) shifted to modern /haʊs/.
• Significance for Section B texts: In Early Modern English texts (c1550–1700), you will often encounter spelling variations that reflect vowels transitioning during the Great Vowel Shift before orthography was standardised.
B. Loss of Rhoticity (The Non-Rhotic Shift)
• Historical Baseline: Prior to the 18th century, English was almost universally rhotic. This means speakers pronounced the /r/ sound after a vowel (known as a post-vocalic /r/) in words like farm, car, and water.
• The Shift: During the 18th and 19th centuries, standard Southern British English and Received Pronunciation (RP) dropped the post-vocalic /r/. This created a non-rhotic variety, resulting in lengthened pure vowels (e.g., car pronounced /kɑː/) or centering diphthongs (e.g., near pronounced /nɪə/).
C. Phonological Reduction and Weakening Processes
Speakers naturally streamline their speech over time. This leads to several distinct reduction processes:
• Elision: The omission or dropping of a sound or syllable in spoken delivery. Historically, this accounts for the loss of the unstressed final /e/ (schwa) from Middle English, as well as the loss of initial consonants in tricky consonant clusters—such as the historical /k/ in knight, the /w/ in write, and the /ɡ/ in gnat.
• Assimilation: A process where a sound changes to become more similar to an adjacent sound to make articulation smoother. For example, historical handbag is frequently pronounced /hambæɡ/ (where the alveolar /n/ assimilates to the bilabial /b/ and becomes /m/), or ten cups is articulated as /teŋ kʌps/.
• Yod-Dropping: The loss of the /j/ sound (the "yod" sound heard in yes) following alveolar consonants. An example is pronouncing suit as /suːt/ rather than traditional /sjuːt/.
• Yod-Coalescence: A form of assimilation where a consonant combines with a following /j/ sound to form a new consonant. For example, \( /t/ + /j/ \rightarrow /tʃ/ \) (turning tune into "choon") or \( /d/ + /j/ \rightarrow /dʒ/ \) (turning during into "jooring").
D. The Foot-Strut and Trap-Bath Splits (17th–18th Century)
• Foot-Strut Split: Middle English had a single short vowel /ʊ/. During the 17th century in Southern English, this split into two distinct phonemes: /ʊ/ (as in foot, put) and /ʌ/ (as in strut, cut).
• Trap-Bath Split: In the 18th century, Southern accents lengthened the short /æ/ vowel to a long back vowel /ɑː/ before certain fricatives and nasals (e.g., in words like bath, grass, and dance), creating a distinct regional and prestige marker.
Key Takeaway: Historical sound changes like the Great Vowel Shift, non-rhoticity, splits, and elision explain why Modern English words are often spelled very differently from how they sound today!
3. Mechanisms and Theories of Phonological Change (AO2)
In Section B, you must apply theoretical frameworks to explain why and how phonological changes spread.
A. Internal Motivations: Ease of Articulation
• Principle of Least Effort: Often, phonological change is driven by the physical human tendency to minimize muscular effort in the vocal organs. Elision, assimilation, and vowel reduction all allow for faster, more economical speech.
B. External Motivations: Standardisation & Prescriptivism
• In the 18th century, prominent writers and lexicographers attempted to fix and regularise pronunciation.
• Samuel Johnson (1755): Published his famous Dictionary of the English Language, reflecting Enlightenment desires for order and stability.
• John Walker (1791): Published the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, which laid down strict prescriptive rules on "correct" pronunciation, often promoting spelling-pronunciations (re-introducing sounds that had previously been elided, simply because they were visible in the spelling).
C. Jean Aitchison's Metaphors of Prescriptivist Attitudes
Linguist Jean Aitchison identified three widespread, non-linguistic metaphors that prescriptivists use when complaining about sound change:
• The Damp Spoon Syndrome: The view that phonological change is caused by laziness, carelessness, or sloppy articulation (like leaving a wet spoon in a sugar bowl). Linguistic reality: Changes like assimilation or elision are natural efficiency mechanisms, not moral failings.
• The Crumbling Castle View: The belief that English was once a magnificent, perfect structure in some golden age of the past that is now deteriorating and must be preserved. Linguistic reality: Language was never in a static, perfect state.
• The Infectious Disease View: The idea that "bad" pronunciation spreads like a contagious illness from person to person. Linguistic reality: People adopt sound changes to adapt to social groups and signal identity, not because of an unavoidable infection.
D. Social Diffusion Models
How does a new pronunciation travel through a population?
• William Labov (Change from Above vs. Below):
– Change from above: Conscious sound changes introduced by dominant social classes or authority figures, motivated by high overt prestige.
– Change from below: Unconscious sound changes originating in everyday vernacular speech, spreading naturally through social interaction.
• The S-Curve Model (Chen / Bailey): Language change typically starts slowly within a small group, accelerates rapidly across society once it gains momentum, and then levels off as it reaches saturation.
• The Wave Model (Johannes Schmidt / C.J. Bailey): A phonological innovation begins at a central social or geographical epicentre and spreads outward like ripples on a pond, gradually losing strength and influence the further it travels from the source.
4. Contextual Triggers for Sound Change (AO3)
To secure top band marks for AO3, you must connect phonological patterns to wider social and historical developments:
• The Printing Press (1476 onwards): William Caxton's printing press froze spelling habits in London conventions just as the Great Vowel Shift was transforming the vowel system, permanently separating orthography from phonology.
• Rising Literacy and Education: As schooling expanded across the 18th and 19th centuries, prescriptive pronouncing dictionaries (such as Walker's) encouraged speakers to pronounce words according to their written spelling.
• Urbanisation and Industrialisation: The mass movement of populations from rural areas into industrial cities during the 18th and 19th centuries brought diverse regional accents together, accelerating sound shifts, dialect levelling, and assimilation.
• Broadcast Media (20th–21st Century): Radio, television, and digital communications exposed widespread audiences to standardized accents (such as early BBC Received Pronunciation), while also facilitating the rapid spread of modern phonological trends.
5. Exam Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them (Component 1, Section B)
Examiner reports for 9EN0/01 highlight common traps that cost students marks in Section B. Keep these essential tips in mind:
• The Orthography vs. Phonology Trap: Do NOT mistake orthographical features for changes in pronunciation! For example, the historical long 's' (written as \( \text{ſ} \)) was purely a typographic font variation, not a different sound. Likewise, interchangeable letters like \( \langle\text{u/v}\rangle \) (e.g., haue for have) or \( \langle\text{i/y}\rangle \) (e.g., ayre for air) represent spelling conventions, NOT phonological changes.
• Avoid Prescriptive Bias: Never use subjective words like "bad", "lazy", "incorrect", or "deteriorating" when analysing historical or modern sound changes. Always write from an objective, descriptive linguistic standpoint.
• Don't Treat Section B like Section A: Section A focuses on contemporary variation and identity; Section B is specifically about diachronic variation (language change over time). Focus your analysis on how and why language has shifted between the historical periods shown in Text C and Text D.
• Never "Name-Drop" Theories Without Textual Proof: Citing Aitchison, Labov, or the S-Curve without directly anchoring them to linguistic evidence in the provided texts will limit your AO2 score. Always quote the textual data first, explain the phonological process, and then integrate the relevant theoretical framework.
Final Exam Tip: When comparing your two texts, construct comparative paragraphs that balance linguistic features (AO1), theoretical models of change (AO2), historical contexts (AO3), and explicit comparative links (AO4). Doing this ensures balanced coverage across all four assessment objectives!