Old English i-umlaut (for the umpteenth time)

This paper offers an account of i-umlaut in Old English based on lexical minimality: the elimination of redundancies from, in this case, the phonological sub-entry in the lexicon. And the notation is that of Anderson & Ewen (1987), which is based, crucially for what follows, on simplex features which may combine in varying proportions. These assumptions combine to favour system-dependent underspecification. In accord with lexical minimality, the approach taken here is also polysystemic: thus, for instance, Old English vowels, even Old English accented vowels, do not enter into only one system of contrasts. The phonology is a system of systems sharing some but not all contrasts. The paper attempts to show that on this basis some of the many apparent anomalies that the evidence has been thought to suggest can be resolved in terms of a simple coherent formulation. Concerning this evidence, it is the intention of the paper to minimise appeals to phonetic features and phonetic processes not warranted by textual and comparative testimony. It is suggested that lack of attention to polysystemicity and a pervasive indulgence on the part of historical phonologists in phonetic fantasies undermine the conclusions reached by generations of scholars concerning the development of phonological systems, both in general and in particular. Accounts of the i-umlaut that affects the ancestor of recorded Old English (henceforth OE) bristle with quirky outcrops: vowels that, apparently unaccountably, fail to be susceptible to it; vowels which seem to be twice affected; vowels whose umlaut results in unexpected outputs. Here I look at the light that might be thrown on i-umlaut and such exceptional aspects as these by a treatment that seeks to minimise lexical, i.e. contrastive representations; that is, seeks to remove redundant information from lexical entries, in the present case from their phonological content. There are various consequences of such an approach which are relevant to the present endeavour. In particular: underspecification, involving the minimalising of substantive and structural lexical specifications; polysystemicity, the recognition that the minimal system of, say, vowels varies according to the phonological environment. I also assume that ‘derived’ specifications within each synchronic phonology involve the filling in of redundant substantive and structural information. The general framework, and particularly the representational aspects of it, that are invoked here is that of Anderson & Ewen (1987). I also adopt another sort of minimality, what one might call interpretative minimality, which involves the intention to avoid the positing of phonetic attributes for reconstructed languages that are not warranted by the historical evidence. Many descriptions of earlier stages of languages invoke detailed phonetic descriptions – in some cases, extensive phonetic fantasies – that in their speculations concerning substantive detail go way beyond what is attested by surviving texts or directly inferable from internal and comparative evidence. (Footnotes 7, 8 and 10 discuss some mild (and not so mild) examples of this.) We should be conservative in our reconstructions of substance (cf. here Anderson 1987a). As Hogg (1988: 190) puts it in relation to confronting problems posed by the study of OE dialects: ‘We need only obey two rules. Firstly, have respect for our scribes and the data they present us with; secondly, make sure that the linguistic analyses we reach have some plausibility’. Quite so. However, attempts at satisfaction of the second rule, certainly, and the first, I suggest here, are themselves contentious, as what follows should illustrate (if it does nothing more). I start here by looking at what I see as the basic character of i-umlaut, illustrated by its effects on the system of short monophthongs of pre-OE. §2 looks at the differences in implementation which are introduced by the fact that the system of long monophthongs is different in structure from that associated with the short monophthongs. Similarly, §3 focuses on the situation with vowels, long and short, before nasals, and seeks to expose at more length the importance of recognising polysystemicity, particularly given the severely reduced system to be found in such positions. Finally, in §4 I turn to the i-umlaut phonology of the system of short and long diphthongs, as traditionally reconstructed, including the striking apparent anomalies of the non-West-Saxon manifestations of this. Reconstruction of the phonological value of the digraph spellings involved here is contentious; I do not attempt within the confines of this paper to survey, let alone evaluate, the various controversies and proposed solutions (for a critical review see Hogg 1992: §§2.20-37), but adopt a rather traditional position in accepting that many but not all of them represent diphthongs (as argued particularly by Colman 1988). 1 The basic story: non-specification and the short monophthongs We can illustrate the effects of i-umlaut in OE with the differences between the root vowels in the first (unumlauted) and second (umlauted) members of the pairs of (related) words in (1):