Old Norse i-umlaut

Abstract

The occurrence of ΟI long-syllable umlauted forms such as gestr 'guest' versus short-syllable nonumlauted ones like staj>r 'place' has not been satisfactorily explained. This distribution of umlauted and nonumlauted forms is explained if the interaction of the umlaut rule with certain other rules already extant in the ON grammar is taken into account and if umlaut is considered to have been an instance of rule expansion. Finally, if our account of ON umlaut is correct, then umlaut must have been a separate phenomenon of North and West Germanic and cannot have been a ProtoGermanic change.

Nordic umlaut, contrastive features and stratal phonology

“…In fact, it can be traced back to the 19th-century neogrammarians, whose theoretically obsolete umlaut hypotheses continue to form an implicit frame of reference to this day(Rischel 2008:199f, Schalin 2017a; 2018:74f with references). Note thatVoyles (1982), similarly to the present analysis, combined this chronology with differing umlaut effects resulting from outcomes of Sievers's Law. In other respects, the present analysis differs from his.23 The necessity to assume a sequence *-i̯ ɪ̟ -is also evident by comparing[SL maui̯ ʊ]+[SL ɪ̟ la] ~> [SL maui̯ ɪ̟ la]+[SL ōn] > ON meyla versus [SL fau̯ a]+[SL ɪ̟ þʊ] ~> [WL fau̯ ɪ̟ þʊ] > ON faeð.…”

The “Conundrum” of Old Norse i-Umlaut: A Reply to Iverson and Salmons

“…As described in Voyles 1982 and1992:115-118, the V theory assumes that the development of ON i-umlaut occurred as in 6, with the environment expanding in at least three successive stages:…”

“…In what follows, I first summarize and critique the Iverson and Salmons 2004 account (the I&S theory) of these developments. I then present an alternative account (first proposed in Voyles 1982, hereafter the V theory), and discuss Iverson and Salmons' critique of this theory.…”