Indo-European Unstressed Short e in Germanic

A sociolinguistically informed solution to an old historical problem: the Gothic genitive plural

“…in *ubiri 'over' > ON yfir, OHG ubiri). 9 I do not find credible the suggestion ofLloyd (1961) that *e was not always raised in unstressed syllables; for instance, note that his scenario would require a very large amount of levelling to eliminate the suffix alternant *-ez-from the paradigms of inherited neuter s-stems. Lloyd's counterexamples are virtually confined to OHG; they can be accounted for by a lowering of *i to e after syllables containing (analogically reintroduced) low or lower mid vowels in the individual prehistory of that language, combined with various unproblematic analogical changes.…”