The Earliest Germanic Umlauts and the Gothic Migrations
1952; Linguistic Society of America; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/410103
ISSN1535-0665
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistic Variation and Morphology
ResumoIn comparative Germanic grammar it is conventionally assumed that IE e eu became respectively PGc. i iu when a high front vowel or glide (i j) occurred in the following syllable. Apart from differences of opinion regarding the manner in which this development took place, the grammars show very little disagreement on the subject. Nearly all assign the change to Proto-Germanic (or at least pre-Gothic) times,' although Schulze2 in particular has noted an apparent lack of umlaut in early runic inscriptions and foreign spellings of Germanic names. It is also a conventional assumption that IE i u became respectively PGc. e o when a low or mid vowel (4 6 j) occurred originally in the next syllable, provided that neither i j nor a cluster of nasal plus consonant intervened. In this instance, however, some scholars' have doubted that the change took place in Proto-Germanic times. The historic results of the i-umlaut under consideration are easily observable in North and West Germanic but not in Gothic. In Gothic, IE e normally appears as i, and IE eu regularly appears as iu. This is true whether i j once occurred in the next syllable, as in midjis = L medius 'middle' and liuhtjan < PGc. *leuxtjanan 'give light', or whether the form never contained such sounds, as in it(an) = L ed(ere) 'eat' and diups < *deupaz 'deep'. On the other hand, IE e appears in Gothic as ai [e] when followed by r h Iv, and here also the original presence or absence of i S j makes no difference whatever in the outcome: OHG birit but Go. bairib [berip] 'bears'; OCS vestb, OE OHG wiht but Go. waihts 'thing'; OHG sihit but Go. saihvib 'sees'. Similarly, Gothic shows no trace of an earlier a-umlaut. IE i u normally appear in Gothic as i u, but are lowered to [e o] (spelled ai au) before h and r, whether or not 4 6 jever occurred in the next syllable. Whether a-umlaut is supposed to have taken place, as in wair < IE *wiros 'man' and dauhtar = Gk. Ova'rrlp 'daughter', or whether such a change could not occur, as in waurms = OS OHG
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