An Optimality Approach to the Great Vowel Shift

Abstract

Ahn, Sang-Cheol. 2002. An Optimality Approach to the Great Vowel Shift. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 27-2, 153-170. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new account of the so-called Great Vowel Shift in English that occurred after the Middle English period, i.e., mostly between the 15th and the 17th centuries. For this purpose, I will employ the theories of Optimality (McCarthy & Prince 1995) and Dispersion (Flemming 1995, 1996). Specifically, I first propose that the overall chain shift could have been initiated by the raising of lax vowels for phonetic reasons. Then, the subsequent raising and diphthongization were consequences of Maintain Contrast requiring that the input vowel contrast be maintained in the output. Here I propose a pattern evaluation procedure for explaining the consequence of the overall chain shift. Finally, I show that the overall shift can be better described by dividing it into two historical stages and that each stage requires a different constraint ranking accounting for its change more precisely. (Kyung Hee University)