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Topic: Great Vowel Shift

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	What is the Great Vowel Shift?
		The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.
		Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth.
		The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift.
	alpha.furman.edu /~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm (0 words)

	NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Great Vowel Shift
		The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600.
		The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by the Danish linguist and Anglicist Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), who coined the term.
		The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Great-Vowel-Shift (2304 words)

	What Is the Great Vowel Shift?
		The Great Vowel Shift refers to the 15th century change in pronunciation of long that occurred in England.
		Some linguists account for the Great Vowel Shift by suggesting that England’s rule by the French led to disenchantment with French pronunciation of vowels, which is a similar pronunciation to that of Middle English.
		The theories regarding the Great Vowel Shift are merely conjectures.
	www.wisegeek.com /what-is-the-great-vowel-shift.htm (585 words)

	Highbeam Encyclopedia - Search Results for shift (Site not responding. Last check: )
		VOWEL SHIFT Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language...
		The term GREAT VOWEL SHIFT is used for a number of longterm changes which affected the English VOWEL system during the 15c–17c.
		Night shift: problems and coping strategies; here's how to adapt to a way of life that is at odds with the body's natural circadian rhythms.
	www.encyclopedia.com /SearchResults.aspx?Q=shift&StartAt=11 (915 words)

	English Language - MSN Encarta
		This change, termed the Great Vowel Shift by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, involved a shift in the articulation of vowels with respect to the positions assumed by the tongue and the lips.
		The Great Vowel Shift changed the pronunciation of 18 of the 20 distinctive vowels and diphthongs of Middle English.
		Pronounced previously in the highest possible position, the/ī/ became diphthongized to “ah-ee,” and the/ū/ to “ee-oo.” The Great Vowel Shift, which is still in progress, caused the pronunciation in English of stressed vowels in English to differ markedly from that of other languages of Western Europe.
	encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761564210_3/English_Language.html (1293 words)

	Highbeam Encyclopedia - Search Results for Vowel
		A vowel (see the diagram accompanying that entry) produced at a position in the vocal tract that is mid-way between the position of a close vowel and that of an open vowel, such as the initial vowel in the word about (a schwa) or the vowel in get.
		A vowel (see the diagram accompanying that entry) produced in the front of the mouth with the front part of the tongue raised, such as the vowels in see, French thé, red, trap, and German Mann.
		Vowel harmony, centralization, and peripherality: the case of Pasiego(*).
	www.encyclopedia.com /SearchResults.aspx?Q=Vowel&StartAt=11 (722 words)

	The Great Vowel Shift
		This is known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS).
		Generally, the long vowels became closer, and the original close vowels were diphthongised.
		One way [of creating distance] was to raise the vowel of mate even higher than that of the lower-class variant; and raising of the lowest vowel in the system would necessitate raising all the vowels above and, ultimately, pushing the vowel of tide into a diphthong.
	courses.nus.edu.sg /course/elltankw/history/Phon/C.htm (0 words)

	Great Vowel Shift
		The Great Vowel Shift was a major linguistic rearrangement which took place in English in the century or two during and after Chaucer’s lifetime: perhaps 1350-1550 (?).
		Indeed, we might guess that the earlier stage either had (a) just three vowels (spelled ‘i’ ‘e’ and ‘a’), or else (b) three close pairs of vowels, where each member of a pair was represented in spelling with the same vowel letter.
		The modern informal terms of "long vowels" and "short vowels" are thus a reflection of an earlier stage of the language where vowel length was a distinctive feature.
	asstudents.unco.edu /faculty/tbredehoft/UNCclasses/ENG419/GVS.html (1727 words)

	The Great Vowel Shift (Site not responding. Last check: )
		The answer is the Great Vowel Shift, a mysterious linguistic phenomenon in which, over the course of generations, various vowels slid upwards and backwards in the throats of English speakers.
		The vowel shift in its entirety has taken centuries (some linguists say that it is still going on today) but between 1400 and 1450, for unknown reasons, the rate of change accelerated.
		To understand the great vowel shift, it is useful for us to have a common linguistic and physiological vocabulary (so we don't have to talk about "that dangly-thing in the back of your throat," but rather have a precise word to describe what's what).
	web.cn.edu /kwheeler/great_vowel_shift.html (418 words)

	Vowel shift Information
		A vowel shift is a systematic change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.
		The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century.
		Other examples of ongoing vowel shifts are the Southern Vowel Shift in the southern United States, the California Vowel Shift in California English, or the Northern cities vowel shift in Michigan, Chicago, and parts of upstate New York.
	www.bookrags.com /wiki/Vowel_shift (124 words)

	Dictionary.com
		The Great Vowel Shift was a massive but gradual change affecting the sound of long vowels of English from the 12th -18th centuries, but mainly in the 15th and 16th centuries at the very end of the Middle English period.
		The long vowels of Middle English shifted upwards, meaning that a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced higher up in the mouth in Modern English.
		The traditional view is that the series of changes was connected, a move in one of the vowels causing a move in another, with each vowel keeping its distance from its neighbor.
	dictionary.reference.com /help/faq/language/s23.html (345 words)

	Linguistic Geography of the United States
		These are in chronological order: the Linguistic Atlas fieldwork begun under the direction of Hans Kurath in the 1930's; the informal but extensive personal observations of Charles Thomas in the 1940's; the DARE fieldwork of the 1960's under Frederic Cassidy; and the Phonological Atlas fieldwork of William Labov during the 1990's.
		Although it may seem that a great amount of data has been collected over a short time span, the shifts in American dialects this century have been rapid enough to outpace the data collection.
		This area is characterized mainly by a conservative vowel scheme, where the long vowels (often attributed to Scandinavian influence) have remained purely monophthongal, exemplified in the widely known long O in the name Minnesota.
	www.evolpub.com /Americandialects/AmDialMap.html (0 words)

	VK5: Lecture 6, page 2: The Great Vowel Shift (Site not responding. Last check: )
		The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) is a generally recognized term for a series of changes affecting late ME long vowels (as well as a few late ME diphthongs) in the variety of standard London English that eventually led to RP.
		With hindsight, however, these changes give the impression of pushing the vowels around in a manner that resembles the country dance movement known as ‘down the middle and up’, only in the reverse order: the vowels have kept moving up the peripheries (i.e.
		Each vowel is represented by a word in which the vowel occurs.
	www.english.su.se /nlj/vk5/lect6/gvs.htm (250 words)

	How to Change the World: Bite Your Tongue: Eight More Ways To Improve Your Presentations
		Any performer will tell you the trick to a really great performance is to make the audience come to you.
		I don't know much about english language, but in polish if you try to articulate vowel you shoud use jaw and mouth.
		Off course if you are preforming on stage you wont to chew words, but while training you must concentrate on every sound, puting all your resonators in proper positions including jaw.
	blog.guykawasaki.com /2007/06/bite_your_tongu.html (0 words)

	The Great Vowel Shift -- brief note on language
		Beginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century (but with its main effects in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) the sounds of the long stressed vowels in English changed their places of articulation (i./e., how the sounds are made).
		Old and Middle English were written in the Latin alphabet and the vowels were represented by the letters assigned to the sounds in Latin.
		The Great Vowel shift invloved a regular movement of the places of articulation: The front vowels each moved up a notch, except for /i:/, which formed a dipthong.
	victorian.fortunecity.com /vangogh/555/Spell/vowelshift.htm (670 words)

	Words, words, words…
		In both sequences, the "highest" pure vowels (ee and ooh) couldn't shift any further and turned into diphthongs with ah- in front of the old vowel sound.
		Foreign words that were adopted into English before the Great Vowel Shift changed values right along with the native words, but in many cases more recent borrowings of similar words have kept their original values, now regarded as "continental" or "foreign" sounding.
		A good example is French polite, which Chaucer or a modern Frenchperson would pronounce "poleet." It shifted as shown above to the modern sound for long-/I/, but since the shift we have also borrowed the similar police from French, and we pronounce it with its native "ee" sound.
	www.io.com /~dierdorf/ww-43.html (946 words)

	The Straight Dope: What was the "Great Vowel Shift" and why did it happen?
		note in the book version of The Story of English, "phrases like the famous 'Great Vowel Shift' [are] hardly more informative than the 'unknown land' of early cartography." What happened was that between 1350 and 1550, the period in which Middle English became modern English, vowel pronunciations changed dramatically.
		The Middle English long i, formerly pronounced like the e in he, shifted to i as in high.
		The experts say the GVS "in effect moved the long stressed vowels forward in the mouth," but to me it just sounds like you open up your mouth more.
	www.straightdope.com /classics/a3_258.html (198 words)

	SoD Chorus old Newsletters
		After a great meal we were served ice cream followed with brownies, cookies and apple crisp.
		Rick Staab - One of the all-time greats.
		Find a great bass, baritone and tenor whom you trust musically, and who in return, have faith in you to lead them onward and upward.
	shrineofdemocracychorus.org /news/dec04.html (2676 words)

	languagehat.com: THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT.
		First, it gives the listener four slices of time and shows how vowels would be pronounced in each of these periods.
		This dialogue is designed for studying the changes in the long vowels and should not otherwise be taken as representative of the speech of any of the four time periods.
		Even then I laughed when an expert with many years of study was reading a paragraph written in todays english but pronounced in the olde english...
	www.languagehat.com /archives/001644.php (451 words)

	Definition of great vowel shift - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
		: a change in pronunciation of the long vowels of Middle English that began in the 15th century and continued into the 16th century in which the high vowels were diphthongized and the other vowels were raised
		Find more about "great vowel shift" instantly with Live Search
		See a map of "great vowel shift" in the Visual Thesaurus
	www.webster.com /dictionary/great+vowel+shift (78 words)

	It's Ablaut Time
		The LSA conference is always a great place to talk to linguists you haven't seen for a year or two, but the talks are often somewhat dissapointing.
		Because we talked a great deal about analogy, which clearly changes the sounds in words without phonological conditioning.
		The initial response has been positive, with great entries contributed by Jeff Good and Jie Zhang.
	ablauttime.blogspot.com (1293 words)

	storytelling: The Great Vowel Shift
		Sometime around 1400 the long vowels of English began to shift upward, which means basically that the degree of opening of the mouth narrowed.
		So the the vowel in the world house changed, but the vowel in the word husband did not; once both were pronounced with a sound you might write as ooo.
		The Great Vowel Shift was a series of language shifts that took place over a very long period of time -- and in fact, never quite finished or caught on in some places.
	www.tiedtothetracks.com /storytelling/archives/000990.htm (1109 words)

	[No title]
		Great Vowel Shift PAGEREF _Toc43353719 \h 5 3.1.
		Causes of the Great Vowel Shift PAGEREF _Toc43353730 \h 15 5.1.
		Causes of the Great Vowel Shift The causes of the GVS are subject to as much debate as the nature of the shift itself.
	www.umiacs.umd.edu /users/kensch/papers/vowel_shift.doc (2476 words)

	Web Lecture 4.4
		If we visual this shift in terms of the phonetics chart for vowels which we studied in Unit 2, we could say that English vowels shifted up the chart.
		The Great Vowel Shift would probably be just an historical curiosity if it weren't for the fact that the first printing press opened in London in 1476, right in the middle of the shift!
		By the time the vowel shift was complete (about 100 years from start to finish), hundreds of books had been printed with the older spellings.
	www.uoregon.edu /~l150web/weblec4.4.html (576 words)

	Shift Information
		in music, a shift is a change of level and is similar to but more basic and general than a chord change.
		On a string instrument a shift is a movement of the left hand in order to play sounds that are beyond the range of the previous hand position.
		Shift the Ape, a character in the Chronicles of Narnia series.
	www.bookrags.com /wiki/Shift (173 words)

	Short vowel words list (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Projects vowel studies list of and which are not believe that they rhyme.
		The word vowel formant frequencies as can be attributed to the low, back, short vowel words list rounded short vowel words list vowels.
		As an average, the long vowels in languages which may in pin, the vowel o; and sometimes.
	vowel.fubarentertainment.com /short-vowel-words-list.html (996 words)

	Great vowel shift (Site not responding. Last check: )
		vowel system to great vowel shift two, one, vowel are great vowel shift used as the mouth.
		Great vowel shift vocal, great vowel shift voclico svenska.
		In nasal vowels, ipa ipaascii rsynth sampa symbolas you.
	vowel.fubarentertainment.com /great-vowel-shift.html (1661 words)

	[No title]
		Epenthesis Vowel epenthesis is a low-level phonetic rule which is used to break up clusters of consonants which are unacceptable in a certain language or variety.
		This is the case in the history of English where only long vowels undergo the shift upwards and diphthongisation of high vowels labelled conveniently the Great Vowel Shift.
		The basic principle of the Great Vowel Shift is that each long vowel was raised by a single level and that the two highest vowels were diphthongised.
	www.uni-essen.de /SHE/HE_Change_Phonological.htm (1609 words)

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