Germanic a-mutation

Last updated

A-mutation is a metaphonic process supposed to have taken place in late Proto-Germanic (c. 200).

Contents

General description

In a-mutation, a short high vowel (*/u/ or */i/) was lowered when the following syllable contained a non-high vowel (*/a/, /oː/ or /æː/). [1] Thus, since the change was produced by other vowels besides */a/, the term a-mutation is something of a misnomer. It has also been called "a-umlaut", "a/o-umlaut", "velar umlaut" and, formerly, "Brechung." [2] (This last was Grimm's term, but nowadays German Brechung, and its English equivalents breaking and fracture, are generally restricted in use to other unrelated sound-changes which later affected individual Germanic languages.) [3]

  • *hurną > Old English horn "horn"
  • *wiraz > Old English wer "man"

The high vowel was not lowered, however, if */j/ intervened between it and the following non-high vowel. An intervening nasal consonant followed by a consonant of any kind also blocked the process (and raised original */e/ to */i/). [4]

  • *gulþą > Old English gold "gold"
  • *gulþijaną > Old English gyldan "to gild" (with later i-mutation of u to y).
  • *hundaz > Old English hund "dog" (German Hund)
  • *swemmaną > *swimmaną > Old English swimman "to swim"

a-mutation seems to have preceded the raising of unstressed final */oː/ to */uː/ in the dialects ancestral to Old English and Old Norse, hence in Old English the phenomenon is subject to many exceptions and apparent inconsistencies which are usually attributed to a mixture of paradigmatic leveling and phonetic context.

Dialectal variation

a-mutation is more evident in some Germanic languages than others. It is widely found in Old High German, less so in other West Germanic languages and Old Norse. [5] a-mutation is less extensive in Old East Norse (the precursor of Danish and Swedish) than Old West Norse (spoken in Norway and its colonies). [6] There is no trace of it at all in Gothic, where the distinction between the short high and mid vowels had become allophonic (Proto-Germanic /e/ and /i/ merged). [7] Old Gutnish, at the eastern end of the territory where Old Norse evolved, resembles Gothic in this respect. But there is some suggestion that a-mutation may have been preserved in Crimean Gothic. [8]

  • Old English fugol, fugel : Old High German fogal "bird"
  • Old Gutnish hult "copse, wood" : Old English, Old Icelandic holt

Variation is found within dialects too with doublets such as Old English spora : spura "spur", spornan : spurnan "to spurn", cnocian : cnucian "to knock"; Old Icelandic fogl : fugl "bird", goð : guð "god", goll : gull "gold."

i > e

According to Campbell, a-mutation of i is limited in Old English to just three words: nest "nest," spec "bacon," and wer "man." [9] [10] More plentiful instances of */i/ > */e/ have been cited in other West Germanic languages, [9] with Old High German showing the greatest number of examples, including doublets such as skif : skef "ship". [11]

The mutation is rare in Old Norse, e.g. verr "man", heðan "hence", neðan "from below" in contrast to niðr "down(wards)" [1] and perhaps jafn "even." Instances where a-mutation has failed to occur in Old Norse can mostly be explained as analogical forms, [12] although a palatal stop /ɡ/ or /k/ immediately preceding the /i/ in a short-root syllable has a tendency to block or reverse the process. [13]

u > o

While Proto-Germanic inherited both of the phonemes */i/ and */e/ from Proto-Indo-European, all instances of */o/ in the later languages arose from a-mutation of */u/, since Proto-Indo-European */o/ had already become Proto-Germanic */a/. a-mutation of /u/ is much more common than that of /i/ but also subject to many exceptions. [14] In some dialects, the change may be blocked in labial contexts. [15] Specifically, a tendency has been observed for the mutation not to occur next to initial or medial */f/ or */w/ in association with */l/. [16] Other exceptions, in particular where there is disagreement between dialects, may be due to the word having once been a u-stem. [16] Most dialects of late Old Dutch underwent a merger of /u/ and /o/, so that in Middle and Modern Dutch only /o/ appears, eliminating all traces of a-mutation of */u/.

The effects of a-mutation are perhaps most noticeable in certain verb types, e.g. strong verbs of classes 2, 3 and 4, where o in the past participle alternates with u in the preterite plural. For example, Old English flogen "flown" < *fluganaz alternated with flugon "they flew" < *flugun. Otherwise, where */u/ and */o/ would originally have alternated morphologically, the old Germanic languages had almost always generalised one vowel or the other throughout the paradigm, although there does occur in Old Swedish (especially in the laws of Östergötland) traces of regular alternation between /o/ and /u/ in line with a-mutation, e.g. kona (subj.) : kunu (obj.) "woman". [17] As can be seen from the examples above, a-mutation is also found in lexical alternations.

The diphthong */eu/

In the West Germanic variety that gave rise to Old English, a-mutation did not affect the second element of the diphthong */eu/ (for which the earliest Old English texts have eu): treulesnis "faithlessness", steup- "step-" (Epinal Glossary 726, 1070); but in other branches of West Germanic */eu/ eventually became */eo/ unless followed by */w/, e.g. Old Saxon breost "breast" vs. treuwa "fidelity." [14] In most variants of Old Norse, */eu/ > /jɒu/ > /ju:/ or /jo:/, without regard to a-mutation, e.g. Old Icelandic djúpr.

Effects of a single nasal consonant

Old English derives from a type of Germanic in which single */m/ had the same effect on preceding */u/ and */e/ as a nasal stop followed by another consonant. [18] The effect occurs in other West Germanic languages, though more erratically, and sometimes in Old Norse.

  • Old Norse nema, Old High German neman : Old Frisian nima, nema, Old Saxon niman, neman : Old English niman "to take"
  • Old High German gi-noman, Old Frisian nomen : Old Norse numinn, Old English numen, Old Saxon numan "taken" (past participle)
  • Old High German gomo "man", Old Frisian gomo : Old Norse gumi, Old English guma, Old Saxon gumo

a-mutation was also sometimes blocked before single */n/, again with much variation among languages.

  • Old Saxon honig, -eg, Old High German hona(n)g : Old English hunig (for older -æg), Old Frisian hunig, Old Norse hunang

Alternative ideas

A number of scholars have questioned the traditional model of Proto-Germanic a-mutation in whole or in part. In particular, the rare a-mutation of */i/ to */e/ "as a P[roto]-G[ermanic] phenomenon has always been contested." [19] Lloyd, for example, proposed an alternative explanation for all apparent instances of a-mutation of */i/; he suggested that "the partial overlapping in Germanic of the two phonemes /i/ (represented in all environments by [i]) and /e/ (with the allophones [e] and [i]) led to the occasional development of an e-allophone of i by systemic analogy". [2] Cercignani, on the other hand, argued that "no 'umlaut' phenomena can be assumed for Proto-Germanic", preferring to ascribe these changes to "the prehistory of the individual languages." [20]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Gordon 1957, § 32.
  2. 1 2 Lloyd (1966), p. 738.
  3. ↑ Collitz (1918), p. 322, footnote 2.
  4. ↑ Campbell 1959, § 116.
  5. ↑ Campbell 1959, § 111 (b).
  6. ↑ Gordon 1957, § 193.
  7. ↑ Wright 1917, §§ 66-72.
  8. ↑ Grønvik (1983).
  9. 1 2 Campbell 1959, § 114 (b).
  10. ↑ Cercignani suggested another possibility: efen "even" < Proto-Germanic *ibnaz < Proto-Indo-European *iminos (cf. Latin imago); see Cercignani 1980, p. 127, fn. 7. However, this reconstruction is unlikely; the more common descent is PGmc *ebnaz, from PIE **h₁ébʰ-nos ~ **h₁ép-nos (cf. **h₁ep-ónos > Gaulish [iano] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: xtgg (help), ianu > Welsh iawn, Breton eün, Cornish ewn).
  11. ↑ Cercignani 1980, p. 130.
  12. ↑ Sturtevant (1956).
  13. ↑ Kluge (1889), p. 545).
  14. 1 2 Campbell 1959, § 115.
  15. ↑ Cercignani 1980, p. 130, and footnote 28.
  16. 1 2 Kluge (1889) p. 122-23, and Anmerkung 6.
  17. ↑ Kock (1890), p. 14.
  18. ↑ Campbell 1959, § 117.
  19. ↑ Cercignani (1980), p. 127, and see footnote 9 for further references.
  20. ↑ Cercignani (1980), p. 129.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germanic languages</span> Branch of the Indo-European language family

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia and Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Norse</span> North Germanic language

Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries.

The Germanic umlaut is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel (fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable contains, , or.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Germanic languages</span> Group of languages

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages. The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes English and the Frisian languages; Istvaeonic, which encompasses Dutch and its close relatives; and Irminonic, which includes German and its close relatives and variants.

In the Germanic languages, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, and are therefore often regarded as the norm. They are distinguished from the Germanic strong verbs by the fact that their past tense form is marked by an inflection containing a, , or sound rather than by changing the verb's root vowel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Germanic language</span> Ancestor of the Germanic languages

Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.

Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian, but there are no known medieval texts from this area. The language of the earlier inhabitants of the region between the Zuiderzee and Ems River is attested in only a few personal names and place-names. Old Frisian evolved into Middle Frisian, spoken from the 16th to the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Saxon</span> Germanic language spoken from the 8th to 12th centuries

Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German. It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe that inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Norse language</span> Progenitor of Old Norse

Proto-Norse was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic in the first centuries CE. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the oldest Scandinavian Elder Futhark inscriptions, spoken from around the 2nd to the 8th centuries CE. It evolved into the dialects of Old Norse at the beginning of the Viking Age around 800 CE, which later themselves evolved into the modern North Germanic languages.

I-mutation is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains, or. It is a category of regressive metaphony, or vowel harmony.

In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.

Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.

Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Dutch</span> Indo-European language

In linguistics, Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th or 9th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gothic language</span> Extinct East Germanic language

Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, and French.

Germanic sound shifts are the phonological developments from the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) to Proto-Germanic, in Proto-Germanic itself, and in various Germanic subfamilies and languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law</span> Sound change law in some West Germanic languages

In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic languages. This includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, and to a lesser degree Old Dutch.

The phonology of Old Saxon mirrors that of the other ancient Germanic languages, and also, to a lesser extent, that of modern West Germanic languages such as English, Dutch, Frisian, German, and Low German.

In phonology, fronting is a sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes fronted, advanced or pronounced farther to the front of the vocal tract than some reference point. The opposite situation, in which a sound becomes pronounced farther to the back of the vocal tract, is called backing or retraction. Fronting may be triggered by a nearby sound, in which case it is a form of assimilation, or may occur on its own.

The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions.

References

See also

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.