The peripatetic history of Middle English */E/

![CDATA[In Modern English, descendants of Middle English *ē, *ε, and *ε (when lengthened in open syllables) are merged in /i/. Examination of the historical sources and of modern dialects suggests that things were a bit more complicated, however. In particular, while *ε (whether merged with *ε, as in Standard English, or not, as in some scattered dialects) approached *ē in the 14th century, it did not merge with *ē until the 17th century. In the interim, *ε (but not *ē) approached *ǣ (or *æj), an approximation that is reflected both in contemporary prescriptive records and in scattered modern dialects. These historical developments are best understood in terms of a view of language change that is not restricted to investigating historical antecedents of prestige and standard dialects and that takes as a given that languages of the past were typologically and structurally comparable to languages of the present. Thus, for example, if near mergers are observed in present languages, the possibility of near merger cannot be excluded in discussions of past languages. A further consequent of our reexamination of *ε is that additional doubt is cast on the chronological and conceptual unity of the Great English Vowel Shift.]]