Vowels in Stessed Syllables
There was ___ in the vowels in stressed or accented syllables.
little change
The general obscuring of unstressed syllables led to...
loss of inflections
Lengthening occurred before these consonant clusters
ld, mb, nd
OE Clawu turned into _____ in ME
clawe
These vowels were lowered and unrounded.
/ae/ /y/
Before the end of OE, every unstressed syllable /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ tended to become
/e/ in spelling, presumably pronounced as schwa
Lengthening of a, e and o took place
open syllables of disyllabic words.
OE gnagan turned into ____ in ME
gnawe
The most important change amongst the long vowels.
raising and rounding of long a
This vowel remained unchanged
/i/
This qualitative distinction is a characteristic of vowels in ME.
Tensing and relaxing
OE daeg turned into _____ in ME.
Dai
They resulted from the combination of a simple vowel with the following consonant /w/ /y/
Diphthongs
When /e/ was final ME.
It was eventually lost.
Long vowels in ME are more ...
Tense
OE Weg turned into ______ in ME.
wei
OE long vowels were shortened late in the OE period or early in ME when followed by ...
double consonants or by most combination of consonants.
This happened with /e/ (schwa) in the plurals and preterite
Syncopated
Short vowels are more ...
relaxed.
Newe