Re: Umlaut, Vowel Harmony etc

Tristan Mc Leay wrote:

>
> - The sound changes don't necessarily bring all vowels into positions of
> influence. In germanic i-mutation, for instance, all that happened was
> an /i/ or /j/ brought a backed stressed vowel forwards. It didn't touch
> front vowels, and the only unrounded back vowel was /A/, so it didn't
> come near /i/.

This isn't quite true.  In OE, short front vowels were raised.  Long
ones weren't touched.