I-mutation

The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is i-mutation.

i-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ (voiced palatal approximant the sound of English <y>).

I-mutation has occurred in many languages (for example, it explains the alternations between Portuguese 'fiz' "I did" < */fetsi/ vs. 'fez' "he did" < */fetse/). However, the term is usually taken (especially when referred to using the name "i-umlaut") to processes in the early Germanic languages.

I-mutation is usually used to refer to a particular set of changes in the old Germanic languages. I-mutation is particularly important because it was productive in the prehistory of the Germanic languages and led to many alternations that are visible in the morphology of these languages, due to the prevalence of inflectional suffixes containing an /i/ or /j/.

This process took place separately in the various Germanic languages starting around 450 or 500 AD in the North Sea area, and affected all of the early languages except for Gothic. It seems to have taken effect earliest, and was most complete in its implementation, in Old English and Old Norse. It took place later in Old High German, and by 900 AD its effects were visible only on /a/. (However, it is argued that /o/ and /u/ were already affected allophonically.)

i-mutation in Proto-Germanic

Proto-Germanic had a similar but smaller version of i-mutation, where /e/ was raised to /i/ if an /i/ or /j/ followed in the next syllable. This operated in stressed and unstressed syllables, and often resulted in syllables that, in turn, became the input of the later i-mutation changes. For example, PIE */bhereti/ -> PG */beriþ/ "he bears". Note also one of the hallmarks of i-modification: Once the sound change happens, the original conditioning factor (e.g. the /i/ at the end of */bhereti/) drops, and the vowel contrast becomes phonemic.

i-mutation in Old English

i-mutation is particularly visible in the inflectional and derivational morphology of Old English. It is visible, for example, in the singular vs. plural forms of the consonant declension of nouns, listed above (for example, fōt "foot", fēt "feet"; mūs "mouse", mȳs "mice"). It affects the second and third person present singular of strong verbs, as compared to the infinitive, and to the comparative form of some adjectives, as compared to the base form. It also occurs throughout the first class of weak verbs, and is often visible in comparison to the word such verbs are derived from: for example, fōda "food", fēdan "to feed"; lár "lore", lǽran "to teach". In addition, it occurs in the nouns corresponding to certain adjectives: strang "strong", strengþ(u) "strength"; hál "whole/hale", hǽlþ(u) "health"; fúl "foul", fýlþ(u) "filth".

i-mutation affects vowels as follows:

i-mutation in Old Norse

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i-mutation in Old High German

i-mutation is visible in Old High German (OHG), c. 900 AD, only on /a/, which was mutated to /e/. By this point, it had already become partly phonologized, since some of the conditioning /i/'s and /j/'s had been deleted or modified. The later history of German, however, shows that /o/ and /u/ were also affected, — starting in Middle High German, the remaining conditioning environments disappear and /o/ and /u/ appear as /ö/ and /ü/ in the appropriate environments.

This has led to a controversy — when and how did i-mutation appear on these vowels? Some have suggested that the vowels must have been modified already in OHG, but was not indicated due to the lack of proper symbols, and/or due to the fact that they were still partly allophonic. Others have suggested that the i-mutation of /o/ and /u/ was entirely analogical, and pointed to the lack of i-mutation of these vowels in certain places where it would be expected, in contrast to the consistent mutation of /a/. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between — i-mutation of /o/ and /u/ was indeed phonetic, occurring late in OHG, but later spread analogically to the environments where the conditioning had already disappeared by OHG (this is where failure of i-mutation is most likely).

i-mutation in Old Saxon and Old Low Franconian

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Arguments over the history of i-mutation

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