Scandinavian umlaut anew: Feature hierarchies and Stratal OT

NOWELE (North-Western European Language Evolution), 2017

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.

North-Western European Language Evolution, 2017

Abstract, errata and corrigenda to article: 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. (see link, has appeared in Nowele 70:2, September 2017)

2017

Persistent and fundamental dissent continues to afflict research on preliterary Scandinavian regressive remote vowel assimilation known as " umlaut " and "breaking". To date, no analysis proposed has adequately accounted for the attested distribution of fronting, rounding nor vowel-induced breaking in the Old Scandinavian lexicon. It has been far from clear how (or even whether) these different kinds of assimilation are interrelated, causally or chronologically. The predicaments extend to the very basics of phonological analysis, such as the pivotal conditions, the mechanism(s) for change and the sequential chronologies, as well as to whether the changes were phonologically metaphonic in the first place – realised to improve perception – or rather driven by phonetic coarticulation (i.e. by easening of an articulatory effort). As a starting point chosen for two articles to appear in 2017, I have not deemed it to be adequate to address the theoretical issues, as has often been done, before examining the defective description of how front umlaut came to be distributed in the attested lexicon.

Nordlyd, 2021

The data puzzle of Proto-Nordic rounding and front umlauts is addressed by positing an undominated markedness constraint that bans [±round] moraic stem-final segments. A related constraint restricts the assignment of [±round] in affixes. These constraints impact on how stem-final triggers spread features to target vowels, which proves a good predictor of the so far poorly understood distribution of umlaut in the lexicon. Since these constraints refer both to syllabification and to specification of contrastive features, the paper applies a tentative reconciliation of constraint-based Stratal Phonology with Contrastive Hier-archy Theory, which postulates universal organisation of emergent features in binary feature hierarchies. Stem-level segments are accordingly assumed to be stripped of redundant overspecification by stem-level constraints, while umlaut was enacted in word-level phonology. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Un-ported" license.

Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 2017

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.

Nordica Helsingiensia 54, 2018

The author pursues an improved diachronic phonological understanding of reconstructed pre-documentary Scandinavian language, with more in-depth consideration given to its vowel history, its eastern vernaculars and the lexical traces of contact with Finnic. Some of the main findings, notably those concerning the umlauts and the history of contrast in the vowel system, have implications for earlier Germanic vowel history beyond the study of Scandinavian. These are the English language portions of the summarising chapter of a compilation thesis.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 2004

The Nordic Languages, Part 2, 2017

On the development of phonological structure from Proto Nordic down to the modern Nordic languages (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish).

Nordicum-Mediterraneum, 2016