Chapter 10 - The Standardisation of Vowel Diacritic Spelling

Summary

Chapter 10 focuses on the standardisation of vowel diacritic spelling, and especially groups of graphemes indicating vowel quality and vowel quantity. Between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, <ea˃ and <oa˃, indicating vowel quality, as well as <dg> and <g>, <tch> and <ch>, and <k> and <ck>, for vowel quantity, shifted from an early distribution principle to a new, modern standard. The results show a modern development that lasted throughout most of the sixteenth century, both in the two digraphs and in the consonantal alternants. By the seventeenth century, the uses of vowel diacritic spelling appear to have crystallised despite later ongoing vocalic developments in Early Modern English. The changes in the sets of graphemes investigated occurred uniformly across two generations, both at vocabulary level, encompassing high-frequency and low-frequency words concurrently, and also across most of the spelling units analysed. As for all the other case studies, my results indicate that there may have been a pragmatic agent behind the modern developments in vowel diacritic spelling.