Wełna, Jerzy2017-08-232017-08-232009Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 45.2 (2009), pp. 3-160081-6272http://hdl.handle.net/10593/19113The paper discusses the geographical distribution of the monophthongisation of (1) the diphthong [ei] (< [e:ç]) before the palatal fricative [ç] (i.e. [eiç > i:ç]) and (2) the diphthong [ou] (< [o:x]) before the velar fricative [x] (i.e. [oux > u:x] in words like high an bough. The resulting monophthongs became the input to the diphthongisation rule, a part of the Great Vowel Shift. On the basis of forty-nine Middle English poetic texts from the Chadwyck-Healey online corpus an effort is made here to establish temporal and dialectal conditioning of the change.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessArtykuł