A history of the English Language

175.
From Old to Middle English.
In considering the changes in pronunciation that English words underwent in passing 
from Old to Middle English we may say that qualitatively they were slight, at least in 
comparison with those that
37 
The study of sounds and sound-changes is known as 
phonology
. Most of the grammars of Old 
and Middle English deal fully with this aspect of the language. Standard treatments of Old English 
have been mentioned in the footnote of § 40. The principal Middle English grammars are those of 
Morsbach (1896), Wright (2nd ed., 1928), and Jordan (1925; 3rd ed. 1968, trans. and rev. Eugene 
J.Crook, 1974). An exhaustive treatment of Middle English phonology is contained in K.Luick, 
Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache
(1914–1940), the final fasciculi edited by Fr.Wild 
and H.Koziol; reprinted with a new index (2 vols., Oxford, 1964). Vol. 2 of Max Kaluza’s 
Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache
(2nd ed., 1907) covers the same period, and a 
briefer treatment is offered by Kluge in Paul’s 
Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 
(vol. I, 2nd 
ed., 1901). B.A.Mackenzie’s 
The Early London Dialect
(1928) is important for the sources of the 
standard speech. In the study of English pronunciation in the modern period Ellis was a pioneer, but 
his work 
On Early English Pronunciation
(5 vols., 1869–1889) must now be considered an unsafe 
guide, to be used with extreme caution. The best introduction to modern views of the later English 
sound-changes is to be found in W.Horn, 
Historische neuenglische Grammatik
(1908); Otto 
Jespersen, 
A Modern English Grammar
(vol. I, 1909); R.E.Zachrisson, 
Pronunciation of English 
Vowels 1400–1700
(1913); Joseph and E.M.Wright, 
An Elementary Historical New English 
Grammar
(1924); E.Ekwall, 
Historische neuenglische Laut und Formenlehre
(3rd ed., 1956); and 
the works of Wyld mentioned below. The more important surveys covering the whole or most of 
the sound-history of English are Henry Sweet, 
History of English Sounds 
(1888), the same author’s 
New English Grammar,