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The notorious cruxes of Common Scandinavian umlaut and breaking: A metaphonic feature-based unified solution
Abstract
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To date, no analysis has adequately accounted for the attested distribution of front umlaut in Old Scandinavian. In this study attention is paid to unexpected outcomes that defy the generally accepted rules. In particular, the complications posed by ir-umlaut are refined into an acid test against which existing hypotheses fail. A genuinely novel proposal is developed, based on the assumption that in prominent syllables contrast well into
the umlaut period was upheld between descendants of Pre-Germanic (PreGmc) */e/ and */i/ respectively, even upon the Pre-Scandinavian raising of *e. Upon such raising the descendants of PreGmc */e/ had in all oral contexts evolved into a markedly fronted coronal vowel, whereas in prominent syllables descendants of PreGmc */i/ had by default, with few exceptions, in a chain shift evolved into a non-umlauting dorsal vowel. Given the assumption that a light second syllable within a main stressed bisyllabic foot was prominent,
the two vowels, active and inert as triggers for front umlaut respectively, could both have occurred in this position. By explaining their distribution in the lexicon, the notoriously intricate cruxes of i-umlaut may be neatly accounted for.
With the application of the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory, the contrastive features of preliterary Scandinavian vowels are here inferred from the interaction between targets and triggers for metaphonic fronting, rounding and breaking. One Proto-Scandinavian feature hierarchy is reconstructed for prominent syllables and another for non-prominent ones. The former hierarchy sustained contrasts that differed from the latter, including contrast for rounding and a preserved distinction between Pre-Germanic */i/ and */e/. A prominence system is reconstructed that predicts both the outcome of syncope and the distribution of the two vowel systems between syllables. The analysis neatly accounts for many notorious cruxes of umlaut and breaking that correlate with the prosodic position of the trigger, including the frequent absence of i-umlaut in light syllables.
This paper follows on recent work (Iverson & Salmons 2004, 2007; Kiparsky 2005, 2006) seeking to resolve Kock's 1888 paradox intro-duced in his celebrated “period theory” of Old Norse i-umlaut. The basic finding is this: In paradigms where a phonological innovation has been rendered opaque by the operation of other sound changes, restructuring of the base form incorporates rather than derives the results of the innovation as it dies out; but if the innovation remains transparent in certain other paradigms, its expiration enables reversion to the antecedent phonological form. Both patterns can be subsumed under the traditional rubric of analogy, resulting in allomorphically uniform paradigms, but the former generalizes a sound change to con-texts in which it never occurred naturally, whereas the latter actually undoes, or reverses, a sound change.
The problems concerning Nordic i-umlaut have been occupying the field longer than memory goes back. The descriptive facts being basically clear, the subject has been a much-favoured testing ground for new theories in phonological analysis and linguistic change. The record is not an entirely flattering one, for the real advances scarcely outnumber instances of collective disregard of words of reason and rallying around popular, but unfounded, idées fixes.
The article contains a critical survey of Nordic umlaut research during the last thirty years. An attempt is made to evaluate the various contributions to this research which have been based, alternately, on structural generative phonological theory; in contrast to the earlier heavily datae-based research, recent work in this field has indeed been more exclusively theory- oriented. that the results of these ene deavors have on the whole not been commensurate with the effort; in spite of the evident optimism which, at certain times at any rate, has dominated this research, it apperars indeed that some of the traditional or classical problems of Nordic umlaut research tend to persist, or continually toreappear, in one guise or another, and thus to continue to defy a convincing solution.
This paper examines how change in prosodic organization determined the course of segmental phonological change in early Germanic, with reference to the following three processes: (i) the development of Sievers' law in Gothic; (ii) i-umlaut in Old Norse; (iii) the shortening of unstressed long vowels in Old English. With the decline of the foot as a super syllabic mora-counting unit of prosodic organization in favor of a strictly syllable-based organization, Sievers' law extended the use of /ji/at the expense of /i:/in Gothic; Old Norse i-umlaut lost the original sensitivity to morale structure; Old English shortening of unstressed long syllables generalized to operate on those vowels that had originally served as a foot constituent.
Some Notes on Old Icelandic Front Mutations. Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) 90
- P Bibire
Bibire, P. 1975. Some Notes on Old Icelandic Front Mutations. Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) 90.183-212.
Untersuchungen zur älteren nordischen und germanischen Sprachgeschichte
- O Grønvik
Grønvik, O. 1998. Untersuchungen zur älteren nordischen und germanischen Sprachgeschichte.