An Analysis of I-Umlaut in Old English

Abstract

Lass (1994) calls the period from Proto-Germanic to historical Old English The Age of Harmony. Among the harmony processes in this period, i-umlaut has been considered as one of the most far-reaching and important sound changes (Hogg 1992, Lass 1994) or as one of the least controversial sound changes (Colman 2005). This paper tries to analyze i-umlaut in Old English within the framework of the Autosegmental theory and the Optimality theory, and explain how suffix i or j in the unstressed syllable cause the stem vowels in the stressed syllable to be fronted or raised.