ON THE PHONOLOGICAL AND ORTHOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENTS OF AFFRICATES IN ENGLISH

This paper aims at looking into some aspects of the developments of phonological and orthographic affricates in English. Some of the diachronic developments of this class of sounds in all three main periods of the history of the English language are scanned. The palatalisation of velar plosives in Old English and that of alveolar plosives in Middle English and Modern English played a key role in the introduction and development of affricates. Another source of affricates is loanwords, particularly from French in the era of Middle English. The number of the orthographic representations of the two affricate phonemes in Old English at the time of first introduction was noticeably small, but there was a significant increase in number in Middle and Modern English.