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Re: Umlaut (was: More questions)

From:Amanda Babcock <ababcock@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 26, 2003, 20:38
On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 07:13:07PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 25, 2003, at 09:06 PM, Amanda Babcock wrote: > > >Is there a general tendency toward fronting, rounding, and lowering, > >as opposed to backing, unrounding, and raising, or are these just the > >three orthogonal operations Germanic languages chose to use? > > The tendency, if there is a shifting, seems to be towards one of the > apexes of the 'vocalic triangle' as, I think, John's email implies. > AFAIK i-umlaut is the most common variety, a-umlaut second most and > u-umlaut least frequent.
Yes, I can certainly see how that would be the case. But what is it that makes u-umlaut perform rounding instead of "backing", and i-umlaut perform fronting instead of unrounding? Thanks, Amanda