Loss of Consonants

§ 408. As shown in the preceding paragraphs, the system of consonants underwent important changes in ME and Early NE. It acquired new phonemes and new phonemic distinctions, namely a distinction between plosives, sibilants and affricates, a phonemic distinction through sonority in the sets of fricatives, sibilants and affricates. On the other hand, some changes led to the reduction of the consonant system and also to certain restrictions in the use of consonants.

As was mentioned in the description of vowel changes, particularly the growth of new diphthongs and long monophthongs, a number of consonants disappeared: they were vocalised and gave rise to diphthongal glides' or made the preceding short vowels long. The vocalisation of [γ] in Early ME and of [x] in Late ME eliminated the back lingual fricative consonants.

With the disappearance of [x'] the system lost one more opposition — through palatalisation, as "hard" to "soft". (The soft [k'] and [g'] turned into affricates some time earlier, see §403).

§ 409. Another important event was the loss of quantitative distinctions in the consonant system.

It should be recalled that in OE long consonants were opposed to short at the phonological level. This is confirmed by their occurrence in identical conditions, their phonological application and the consistent writing of double letters, especially in intervocal position (see § 147). In Late ME long consonants were shortened and the phonemic opposition through quantity was lost.

The loss of long consonant phonemes has been attributed to a variety of reasons. Long consonants disappeared firstly because their functional load was very low (the opposition was neutralised everywhere except intervocally), and secondly, because length was becoming a prosodic feature, that is a property of the syllable rather than of the sound. In ME the length of the syllable was regulated by the lengthening and shortening of vowels; therefore the quantitative differences of the consonants became irrelevant.

§ 410. In addition to all these changes, which directly affected the system of phonemes, some consonants underwent positional changes which restricted their use in the language. The consonants [j] and [r] were vocalised under certain phonetic conditions — finally and before consonants — during the ME and Early NE periods, though they continued to be used in other environments, e. g. initially: ME rechen NE reach; ME yeer, NE year. Some consonants were lost in consonant clusters, which became simpler and easier to pronounce, e.g. the initial [x] survived in ME as an aspirate [h], when followed by a vowel, but was lost when followed by a sonorant; cf. OE hē,hund > ME he [he:], hound [hurnd] (NE he, hound)and OE hlǣne which became ME leene ['le:nə] (NE lean); OE hlystan and ME listen ['listən] (with further simplification of the medial cluster in NE listen, as [t] was dropped between [s] and [n]).

In Early NE the aspirate [h] was lost initially before vowels — though not in all the words, e.g. ME honour [ho'nu:r] > NE honour, ME hit or it > NE it, but ME hope ['hɔ:pə] > NE hope.

In Early NE the initial consonant sequences [kn] and [gnl were simplified to [n], as in ME knowen ['knowən], gnat [gnat], NE know, gnat. Simplification of final clusters produced words like NE dumb, climb, in which [mb] lost the final [b].

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Treatment of Fricative Consonants in Middle English and Early New English	\|	Historical Foundations of Modern English Spelling

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