Re: Umlaut

Pavel Iosad <pavel_iosad@...> writes:

> I guess he's a bit confused. As I see it, as long as the umlauting vowel
> in the adjacent syllable is present, the umlauted sound remains, to me,
> an allophone of whatever was there without the umlaut. The phonological
> split occurs when the vowel disappears (and it is technically ablaut
> then). Umlaut itself doesn't lead to phonological split.
I also think this definition of Umlaut is too narrow.
Suppose you had modern English using -/i/ for plural
nouns again, and you took, say, the word /pOt/, and
its plural was first /pOti/, and then /pEti/ (assuming
/E/ is still part of the phonological system). Is that
Umlaut or not? What if, instead, it becomes [p9ti]
(and /9/ is not a phoneme, [9] appearing only as an
allophone of /O/)? Is that Umlaut or not?

What, then, if /pEti/ or [p9ti] lose the /i/? Is it
correct to call that Ablaut, even while it's clear that
the change was conditioned and not simple arbitrary
alternation? What I mean to say is: may one only
describe Umlaut synchronically, or is it OK to do
it diachronically?

ObConlang: Senu Yivokuchi has both i-Umlaut (affection!
affection!) and u-Umlaut, though only /a/ is affected.
This affection doesn't induce diphthongization, but it
varies the diphthongization of former /a:/:

    ak- 'woman'
    aka 'a woman'
    eki 'the woman'

    peok- 'chest'     (< pa:k)
    peoka 'a chest'
    paiki 'the chest' (< pe:ki < pa:ki)

In this case the final /i/ is still there, but compare:

    dac- 'ask'
    dace '(he) asks'
    decse '(he) has asked' (< dec-is-e < dac-is-e)


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/index.html