The Quality of the Front Reduction Vowel in Early American English

o X fiHE problem of the English unstressed vowels is both difficult and 1 elusive. True, we already possess a firm foundation of knowledge. We know, for instance, that the two modern types [a] and [I] were established comparatively early,l possibly side by side with a type [E1] which may or may not be represented by Received Standard British [81];2 we know that the eighteenth century distribution of unstressed endings-or even the stress-patterns themselves-varied considerably from the present distribution;3 we are beginning to realize that such a thing as Pope's apostrophe in fill'd, address'd, etc., may as well be the mark of a vowel normally pronounced as a mere ornament of punctuation. The large collections of spellings made by Krapp, Wyld, Orbeck, et al., coupled with work on the English orthoepists make tllese matters abundantly clear. Less clear is the actual quality of the early reduction vowel now represented by [I] or its diaphones in certain initial and final unstressed syllables. Most authorities seem to assume that the present vowel-quality, whether or not it arises from an earlier [E1], was attained almost as soon as the unstressed or semi-stressed vowels lost complete tonality; in which case [I] must have been as characteristic of the eighteenth, seventeenth, and sixteenth centuries as it is of today. That is the current view, and considering the large number of i-spellings on which it is based4 together with the interpretation placed upon the relevant dicta of the Early Grammarians,5 it appears to be the only tenable theory. There is, however, another body of spelling evidence not hitherto considered. While the EMnE. and EMnA. i-spellings have received careful evaluation, a class of ee-spellings that may have a vital bearing upon the

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