indicates /i/ is the shortest among the tense vow- els, and /I/ is the shortest among the lax vowels except for /‰/ in an unstressed syllable. Sonority of a segment can be a measure of its prominence: The more sonorous, the more prominent, and the less sonorous, the less prominent. Selkirk (1984) suggests that high vowels are the lowest in sonority among the vowels.19 In addition, Pulleyblank (1998) shows that front vowels are less sonorous than back vowels in Yoruba.20 Given these two studies, it is reasonable to assume that the high front vowels including j are the least sonorous and hence least prominent among the vowels. If the crosslinguistic evidence presented up to this point is applicable to OE, the trigger of i-umlaut in OE, i or j, would be the inherently weakest and hence the most perceptually difficult among the vowels. The trigger of i-umlaut in OE is prosodically disadvantageous, too. It is always found in the unstressed syllable.21 Segments including vowels in the unstressed syllable tend to have shorter duration and lower amplitude than the stressed counterparts. And they tend to lack a salient pitch con- tour. Furthermore, the trigger is located in the morphologicially weak position, namely, in the suffix. To sum, it is highly probable that the trig- ger of i-umlaut in OE suffers the perceptual difficulties which are not only inherent but also prosodic and morphological. Next, take a look at the targets of umlaut. In contrast with the trigger, they are placed in a prosodically and morphologically strong position, i.e. a stressed root syllable. Hence, i-umlaut in OE follows a harmony pattern involving a weak trigger and a strong target. Unlike root-con- intensity among the English sounds; it is arbitrarily assigned a value of 1.0. I exclude diphthongs and the consonants except for /w, j/. 18 cf. Fry’s (1979) measurements: The five lowest vowels in intensity include /u/ 24 dB, /e/ 23 dB, and /i, u:, i:/ 22 dB. 19 Glides are lower in sonority than vowels. 20 Walker (2005) cites Pulleyblank’s finding when she briefly mentions the weak trigger effect of umlaut in Old High German. However, she does not pro- vide a detailed analysis. 21 Campbell (1959: §204 (2)) claims the trigger of i-umlaut should be in an unstressed syllable. Namely, the trigger in the stressed syllable cannot bring about umlaut. By contrast, Hogg (1992) addresses the presence and absence of stress in the trigger is irrelevant in the operation of umlaut. However, it is rea- sonable to follow Campbell’s observation given the distribution of the data. 1050 An-Nah Moon trolled harmony, i-umlaut in OE requires that the harmonizing feature spread from the unstressed suffix onto the stressed root vowel. Then, we can raise a question: Why does the weak trigger cause umlaut and affect the strong targets? I propose that i-umlaut in OE is motivated by perceptual markedness (or weakness) of the trigger that is difficult to identify. Like vowel harmony initiated by perceptual weakness of the trigger (Kaun 1995, Walker 2004, 2005, Revithiadou et al. 2005, Jiménez and Lloret 2007), i-umlaut in OE occurs in order to improve the percepti- bility of the weak trigger by extending its high front property to the strong position, i.e. the stressed root vowel. IV. A Licensing Account of i-Umlaut in OE This section provides an OT-theoretic analysis of i-umlaut in OE that utilizes the licensing approach to vowel harmony proposed by Walker (2004, 2005). Walker notes the weak nature of the triggers in metaphony patterns in Romance languages and develops an approach under which the metaphonic patterns are grounded in improving perceptual weakness. In the analysis of height harmony in Veneto, Walker argues that assimila- tion of a stressed vowel to an unstressed vowel quality is driven by a positional licensing constraint requiring that perceptually-difficult struc- ture be associated with a strong position. She formalizes a generalized licensing constraint as in (7).
(7) (Walker 2005: 941)22 LICENCE(F, S-Pos): Feature [F] is licensed by association to strong posi- tion S.
The general schema for prosodic licensing constraints in (7) is ground- ed in perceptual weakness of the trigger. LICENSE(F, S-Pos) requires that a perceptually difficult feature be affiliated with a perceptually strong position. In order to formulate the claim proposed in the previous section, I adopt Walker's general schema for licensing constraints and tentatively propose a set of licensing and faithfulness constraints, and their relative ranking, as in (8) and (9).
22 I made her general schema short for ease of exposition. I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1051
(8) a. License([-back]unstressed suffix, r´ root): [-back] in an unstressed suffix in the input must be associated with a stressed root syllable in the output.23 (LIC([-bk]))
(8) b. License([-low]unstressed suffix, ´rroot): [-low] in an unstressed suffix in the input must be associated with a stressed root syllable in the output. (LIC([-lo])) (8) c. Ident-IO([back]): Output correspondents of an input [åback] segment are also [åback]. (ID([bk])) (8) d. Ident-IO([low]): Output correspondents of an input [ålow] segment are also [ålow]. (ID([lo])) (8) e. Ident-IO([high]): Output correspondents of an input [åhigh] segment are also [åhigh]. (ID([hi])) (8) f. Ident-IO([round]): Output correspondents of an input [åround] seg- ment are also [åround]. (ID([rd]))
(9) LIC([-bk]) ≫ LIC([-lo]) ≫ ID([bk]), ID([lo]), ID([hi]), ID([rd])
The hierarchy of the proposed constraints confirms that i-umlaut in OE is driven by the licensing constraints at the expense of the constraints prohibiting featural changes of a vowel, so-called IDENT-IO(F).24 The licensing constraints require the features of the weak trigger to be associ- ated with the vowel in the stressed root syllable, whereby the poor per- ceptibility of the weak trigger is improved. In this analysis, I proposed two separate licensing constraints as in (8a) and (8b) instead of one licensing constraint requiring both [+high] and [-back] to be associated with a strong position like LIC([-bk, +hi]). While LIC([-bk, +hi]) makes all the target vowels become [i] or [ ] regardless of their height and backness, the decomposed licensing con- straints prevent all the target vowels from being a high front vowel. Furthermore, the hierarchy between the licensing constraints, LIC([-bk]) ≫ LIC([-lo]), can correctly capture the pattern of i-umlaut in OE: When
23 In this study, I modify Walker’s (2004, 2005) general schema for licensing constraints. According to Walker’s definition which is not shown in (7), the licensing constraints check licensing of the weak trigger in the output. By con- trast, i-umlaut in OE requires the licensing of the weak trigger in the input. This kind of modification is also supported by Jiménez and Lloret (2007). However, we do not need to revise Walker’s definition if we assume the stage in which the high vowel is not deleted. 24 For expositional convenience, I use IDENT-IO[F](ID([F])) as a cover term constraint for a set of constraints that require a featural identity of a vowel. 1052 An-Nah Moon fronting and raising are possible in an environment, only fronting occurs, and raising can occur only when fronting is vacuously satisfied. In addition, the weak trigger of i-umlaut in OE attracts the target vow- els one step toward the high front position. Fronting and concomitant raising are not allowed except for low vowels before a nasal. Also, the short low front vowel is not raised to high, but to mid. In order to explain such pattern, I propose a set of locally conjoined faithfulness constraints, which block changing more than one vowel feature in the target vowels, and their relative ranking, as in (10) and (11).
(10) a. ID([bk])&ID([lo]): The values of [back] and [low] of a stem vowel in the input are not simultaneously changed in the output. (ID&ID([lo])) (10) b. ID([bk])&ID([hi]): The values of [back] and [high] of a stem vowel in the input are not simultaneously changed in the output. (ID&ID([hi]))
(11) LIC([-bk]) ≫ LIC([-lo]), ID&ID([lo]), ID&ID([hi]) ≫ ID([F])
How the constraints and their relative ranking proposed up to now work is illustrated in the following tableaux. First, let us look at the word whose stem vowel is /u¯/.
(12) my¯s [my¯s] dat.sg. of mu¯s ‘mouse’25,26
25 In this paper, I do not include the constraints that account for the deletion of the trigger in the tableaux, for ease of exposition. Deletion of the trigger is often treated under the name of High Vowel Deletion (HVD). Moon (1996) explains deletion and retention of high vowels in pre-OE by the interaction of constraints such as ONS, a set of the decomposed MAX(V) constraints, and a set of alignment constraints. The interaction of the constraints relevant to HVD and i— umlaut can be illustrated as follows (Only the candidates satisfying Align(Infl, L FT, R) are provided in the tableau, due to lack of space. For more about HVD, refer to Moon (1996)): LIC ID ID MAX /mu¯s+i/ AL ([-bk]) ([bk]) ([rd]) (HV) a. (mu¯)si *! *! b. (my¯)si *! * c. (mu¯s) *! * d. (my¯s) * * e. (m s) * *! * I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1053
LIC LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID /mu¯s+i/ ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. mu¯s *! b. my¯s * c. mi s * *! d. me¯s *! * * e. mo¯s *! * * f. ma¯s *! * * * *
LIC([-bk]) requires [-back] feature of the weak trigger to be licensed by spreading to the stressed stem vowel. Candidates (12a), (12e) and (12f), whose stem vowel is back, fatally violate LIC([-bk]) since [-back] feature of the weak trigger is not licensed in the output. Candidates (12b), (12c) and (12d) tie in the satisfaction of LIC([-bk]) since their stem vowels are fronted. (12d) fatally violates ID&ID([hi]) since the val- ues of [back] and [high] are both changed in the output. Between (12b) and (12c), (12b) becomes an optimal output since (12b) is more faithful than (12c). The short counterpart of the high vowel is explained in the same way, as seen in the following tableau.
(13) byrg [byr ] dat.sg. of burg ‘city’
LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID /burg+i/ ([-bk]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. bur *! b. byr * c. bir * *! d. ber *! * * * e. bor *! *
Now let us consider the case whose input stem vowel is /o¯/.
26 Hereafter, we will not deal with the candidates violating LIC([-lo]) when we analyze the words whose input stem has a non-low vowel. They vacuously satisfy LIC([-lo]). 1054 An-Nah Moon
(14) fo¯e¯t [fø¯t] dat.sg. of fo¯t ‘foot’ (earlier form)
LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID /fo¯t+i/ ([-bk]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. fo¯t *! b. fø¯t * c. fe¯t * *! d. fu¯t *! * e. fi t *! * * * f. fy¯t *! * *
(14a) and (14d) incur the fatal violation of LIC([-bk]) since [-back] of the trigger is not licensed in the output. On the other hand, the remaining candidates, (14b), (14c), (14e) and (14f), satisfy LIC([-bk]) by associat- ing [-back] feature of the trigger with the stressed stem vowel. In addi- tion to fronting, further raising to a high vowel as in (14e) and (14f) fatally violate ID&ID([hi]) since the values of [back] and [high] are both changed in their outputs. Between the candidates satisfying both LIC([-bk]) and ID&ID([hi]), the more faithful candidate, (14b), becomes the optimal output. The umlauted mid vowels, [o¯] and [o], undergo a subsequent unround- ing. In Section 2, I have assumed two stages of change in case of mid vowels: fronting and unrounding. In order to account for the later unrounding, I propose a constraint prohibiting the rounded mid front vowels as in (15) which is ranked above LIC([-bk]). This constraint can be motivated by not only crosslinguistic markedness of the mid front rounded vowels (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996, Maddieson 2011, UPSID Database)27 but also the absence of the front rounded vowels in the inventory of the vowel phonemes in OE.
27 According to their survey, front vowels are unrounded and back vowels are usually rounded in the great majority of the world’s languages, while only a small minority of languages have front or central rounded vowels. In addition, an analysis of the UPSID database shows mid front rounded vowels are less fre- quent than high front rounded vowels, which may indicate the former is more marked than the latter. Such difference in markedness may allow us to explain why unrounding of the umlauted high front rounded vowels is delayed until the end of OE. Their frequencies can be compared in the following table: I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1055
(15) *ø¯/ø: No mid front rounded vowel is allowed. (16) *ø¯/ø≫ID([F])
Tableau (17) illustrates how (15) interacts with the other constraints and chooses the later form of fo¯e¯t, i.e. fe¯t.
(17) fe¯t [fe¯t] dat.sg. of fo¯t ‘foot’ (later form)
LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID /fo¯t+i/ *ø¯/ø ([-bk]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. fo¯t *! b. fø¯t *! * c. fe¯t * * d. fu¯t *! * e. fi t *! * * * f. fy¯t *! * *
(17b), which was the most optimal in the previous stage, is now worse than (17c) since it violates the markedness constraint prohibiting [ø¯] and [ø] which is visibly active at the later stage. Now let us move onto the words whose input stem has a low vowel preceding a nonnasal consonant. In contrast with the mutated forms of nonlow vowels which satisfy both of the licensing constraints, mutation of the low vowels always violate LIC([-lo]) since the low vowels are just fronted without raising when they precede a nonnasal consonant. This is correctly captured by the proposed hierarchy of the constraints, as seen in the following tableau.
occurs % of Vowels in languages 451 languages long mid front rounded 12 0.4 mid front rounded 11 0.2 long higher mid front rounded 12 0.4 higher mid front rounded 12 2.7 lower mid front rounded 18 1.8 long high front rounded 14 0.9 high front rounded 24 5.3 1056 An-Nah Moon
(18) æ¯c [æ¯ k] dat. sg. of a¯c ‘oak’
LIC LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID /a¯k+i/ ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) a. a¯k *! * b. æ¯k * * c. e¯k * * *! d. k * *! * * * e. u¯k *! * * * f. o¯k *! *
Candidates (18a), (18e) and (18f) fatally violate LIC([-bk]) since their stem vowel is not fronted. Among the candidates with the stem vowel fronted, (18b) best satisfies the hierarchy of the constraints: (18d) vio- lates both ID&ID([lo]) and ID&ID([hi]), which is fatal, while (18c) is less faithful than the optimal output (18b). Mutation of the short low back vowel is explained in the same way that its long counterpart is explained as seen in (19).
(19) ældra [ældra] comp. of ald ‘old’
LIC LIC ID&ID ID&ID ID ID /ald+ira/ ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) a. aldra *! * b. ældra * * c. eldra * * *! d. ildra * *! * * e. uldra *! * * f. oldra *! *
In contrast with the low back vowels discussed above, the low back vowels preceding a nasal are mutated to [e] and [e¯], not to [æ] and [æ¯]. They undergo additional raising. Although there have been controversies on what is the intermediate stage of the change from [a¯]/[a] to [e¯]/[e]28
28 On the issues, refer to footnotes 11 and 14 in this paper. I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1057 and what brings about raising of [a¯]/[a] to [e¯]/[e]29, what is not changed is that [a¯] and [a] are not allowed to appear before a nasal in the umlaut environment. However, we cannot simply posit a markedness constraint like (20a) in order to rule out a prenasal low back vowel since the low back vowels are allowed to appear in the non-umlaut environments, as in lang ‘long’ and mann ‘man’. In order to account for such distributional difference, it is necessary to posit the local conjunction of LIC([-lo]) and the markedness constraint in (20a) in a suffixed form, as in (20b). The locally conjoined constraint, *[+lo]&LIC([-lo]), prohibits a prenasal low back vowel in the umlaut environment.
(20) a. *[+lo]: No low vowel is not allowed before a nasal. b. *[+lo]&LIC([-lo]): *[+lo] and LIC([-lo]) are not simultaneously violated in a suffixed word.
(21) *[+lo]&LIC([-lo])≫LIC([-lo]), ID&ID([lo]), ID&ID([hi])≫ID(F) ≫*[+lo]
How (20b) and (21) work is illustrated in the following tableau.
(22) we¯n [we¯n] nom.acc.sg. ‘hope’30
*[+lo]& LIC LIC ID&ID ID&ID ID&ID /wa¯n+i/ LIC([-lo]) ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. wa¯n *! * * b. wæ¯n *! * c. we¯n * *! d. wø¯n * e. w n * *! f. wu¯n *! * g. wo¯n *! *
29 For example, Hogg (1992) and Lass (1994) claim the raising is caused by the following nasal (prenasal raising), while Campbell (1959) states the follow- ing nasal palatalized by the i-umlaut trigger brings about a further change of [æ] to [e]. Given that raising of the nasalized vowels is frequent in Germanic and WGmc, and there is no supporting evidence of the raising effect of the palatalized conso- nant in OE, it seems to be more plausible to follow Hogg (1992) and Lass (1994). 30 Due to lack of space, the constraints that are not crucial in the selection of an optimal output are not shown in the tableau. 1058 An-Nah Moon
Candidates, (22a), (22f) and (22g), which have a back vowel in the out- put, are ruled out due to the fatal violation of LIC([-bk]). Among the remaining candidates which satisfy LIC([-bk]) by fronting their root vowel, (22c) best satisfies the hierarchy of the constraints: (22b) fatally violates *[+lo]&LIC([-lo]) since *[+lo] and LIC([-lo]) are both violated; (22d) is less faithful than (22c), which is fatal; (22e) incurs an additional violation of ID&ID([hi]) compared with the optimal output, (22c). Mutation of a short vowel /a/ is explained in the same way that its long counterpart is analyzed, as in (23).
(23) lengra [le\gra] comp. of lang ‘long’
*[+lo]& LIC LIC ID&ID ID&ID ID /lang+ira/ LIC([-lo]) ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. la\gra *! *! * b. læ\gra *! * c. le\gra * d. lø\gra * *! e. li\gra * *! f. lu\gra *! * * g. lo\gra *! *
Compared with lengra, comp. of lang ‘long,’ the stem vowel of lang undergoes neither fronting nor raising. A low back vowel is allowed before a nasal in the forms which do not have a weak suffix. This pattern is also accounted for by the same hierarchy of the constraints that accounts for the mutated words. The highly ranked constraints such as *[+lo]&LIC([-lo]) and the licensing constraints are irrelevant in the account of the words such as lang since they are vacuously satisfied. On the contrary, the featural change in such words incurs a fatal violation of IDENT-IO(F) or the locally conjoined IDENT-IO(F) constraints ranked above *[+lo], whereby a low back vowel is allowed before a nasal. The most faithful candidate is chosen as an optimal output at the expense of the markedness constraint, *[+lo]. This is illustrated in the following tableau. I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1059
(24) lang [la\g] ‘long’
*[+lo] ID&ID ID&ID ID ID ID ID /lang/ *[+lo] &LIC ([lo]) (hi]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. la\g *! b. læ\g *! c. le\g *! * * d. lø\g *! * * * e. li\g *! *! * * * f. lu\g * *! * g. lo\g * *!
Finally, let us consider the case of mutation of the front vowel. Among the front vowels, only the short low vowel is subject to mutation.
(25) bedd [bedd] ‘bed’
LIC LIC ID&ID ID ID ID ID */bæd+i/ ([-bk]) ([-lo]) ([lo]) ([bk]) ([lo]) ([hi]) ([rd]) a. bædd *! * b. bedd * c. bidd * *! d. budd *! * * * * * e. bodd *! * * *! f. badd *! * * *
When the stem vowel is front as in (25a), (25b) and (25c), LIC([-bk]) is vacuously satisfied and hence LIC([-lo]) is visibly active in selecting an optimal output among them. When the input vowel is not raised, it incurs the fatal violation of LIC([-lo]) as in (25a). Between the candi- dates that obey both of the licensing constraints, the more faithful candi- date, (25b), is chosen as an optimal output. Up to this point, we have shown that the proposed constraints and their relative ranking in the hierarchy explain why the weak trigger i or j pro- vokes umlaut in OE and capture that fronting of back vowels and raising 1060 An-Nah Moon of the front vowel are not distinct processes, but differential responses to features of the weak trigger, i.e. [-back, +high].
V. Nonlicensing Approaches to i-Umlaut in OE In this section, we discuss the possible problems that we can encounter when we adopt a nonlincensing approach to i-umlaut in OE. First, let us consider the spreading approach. As vowel harmony is often treated as featural spreading, i-umlaut in OE can be treated as featural spreading. Featural spreading is embodied as several kinds of constraint within the framework of OT: SPREAD(F) (Padget 1995, Kaun 1995), AGREE(F) (Bakovic 2000), Match(F) (McCarthy 2003), ALIGN(F) (Kirchner 1993, Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994), and SHARE(F) (McCarthy 2009ab). Although these constraints have different implications and predictions, they can be considered as the same in that they demand featural spread- ing.31 Moon (2001) proposes Spread Front in the account of interaction of i-umlaut and palatalization in OE and revises it into an alinement con- straint, AlignR([-bk], vowel) in the same study. Unlike the licensing con- straints proposed in the previous section, either Spread Front or AlignR([-bk], vowel) cannot account for why i-umlaut in OE favors a hight front vowel or a glide trigger in the unstressed syllable. They just give an order of spreading on the syllable left or aligning a segment to the left without providing a phonetic motivation in the umlaut. An alternative positional faithfulness approach to vowel harmony is also inadequate to explain i-umlaut in OE. Positional faithfulness (McCarthy and Prince 1995, Beckman 1998 among others) expects har- mony sensitive to a strong position, namely, either to a stressed syllable or to a root vowel. Under positional faithfulness, root faith is more important than affix faith (IDENT-IOroot≫IDENT-IOaffix), and faithfulness in a stressed syllable is more important than faithfulness in an unstressed syllable (IDENT-IOó≫IDENT-IOoˇ). Positional faithfulness plays a cru- cial role in accounting for harmony initiated by a prosodically and/or morphologically strong trigger. Accordingly, harmony driven by percep- tual weakness of the trigger would require the fixed ranking of the posi- tional faithfulness constraints to be reversed (Walker 2005, Jiménez and
31 For more detailed discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each constraint, refer to McCarthy (2003, 2009a) and Poliquin (2006). I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1061
Lloret 2007, Kaplan 2008). Furthermore, given extensive crosslinguistic evidence and functional grounds of positional faithfulness, it is not desir- able to posit the reversed hierarchy of the constraints such as IDENT-
IOaffix≫IDENT-IOroot (Walker 2005). I-umlaut in OE would also be in the same dilemma. However, the licensing account proposed in Section 4 allows us to maintain the universal generalizations captured by positional faithfulness. In the account, positional faithfulness is not just visibly active in i-umlaut in OE.
VI. Conclusion In this study, it has been suggested that the main characteristic of i- umlaut in OE is that it is provoked by a weak trigger and targets a seg- ment in the strong position. In order to account for this pattern, I relied on the licensing approach to vowel harmony and provided a formal analysis couched in OT. While the rule based analyses or the analyses based on spreading (or alignment) and positional faithfulness fail to incorporate the perceptual motivation in i-umlaut in OE, the proposed licensing account is more successful on explanatory ground in that it can easily capture the phonetic motivation for i-umlaut in OE: the inherently, prosodically and morphologically weak trigger promotes assimilation of the vowel in the stressed root syllable in order to improve its perceptibili- ty. The main insight shown in the licensing account proposed in this study is that umlaut in OE is driven by a desire to place [-back] or [-low] in a prominent position, i.e. the vowel in the stressed root syllable rather than a desire to spread on syllable to left or to align a segment to the left. That is, it has been shown that the goal of i-umlaut in OE is to propagate [-back] or [-low] to the target in the strong position rather than to simply spread or align [-back] or [-low]. Unlike metaphony patterns in Romance languages, umlaut in OE makes the stem vowels move one step toward the high front position, not become a front vowel in one fell swoop. The target vowels also do not undergo both of fronting and raising, except for the prenasal low vowels. In order to account for this pattern, I have proposed the separate licens- ing constraints and introduced local conjunction. In the proposed analy- sis, it is shown that the interaction of the licensing constraints, the locally conjoined constraints, some markedness constraints and IDENT-IO(F) constraints correctly yield optimal outputs. One and the same hierarchy 1062 An-Nah Moon of the constraints proposed in this study allows us to provide an analysis capturing that fronting of back vowels and raising of front vowels are not distinct processes, but differential reponses to features of the trigger. Finally, in this study we have shown that i-umlaut in OE can be newly added to a typology of vowel harmony instigated by perceptually weak triggers.
Inha University
Key Words: i-umlaut, Old English, weak trigger, licensing constraint, optimality theory
Work Cited
Anderson, John. “Old English i-Umlaut (for the umpteenth time).” English Language and Linguistics 9.2 (2005): 195-227. Archangeli, Diana and Douglas Pulleyblank. Kinande Vowel Harmony: Domains, Grounded Conditions, and One-sided Alignment. ms. U of Arizona and University of British Columbia, 1994. Bakovic, Eric. Harmony, Dominance and Control. Diss. Rutgers U, New Brunswick, 2000. Beckman, Jill. Positional Faithfulness. Diss. U of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1998. Campbell, Alistair. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1959. Cassidy, Frederic and Richard Ringler. Bright’s Old English Grammar & Reader. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Colman, Fran. “Old English i-Umlaut: A Unitary Sound Change?” Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity. Ed. Philip Carr, Jacques Durand and Colin Ewen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. 31-62. Crystal, Thomas H. and Arthur S. House. “The Duration of American English Vowels: An Overview.” Journal of Phonetics 16 (1988): 263-84. Edwards, Harold. Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English. Clifton Park: Thomson, 2003. Féry, Caroline. 1994. “Umlaut and Inflection in German.” ROA 34, 1994. Fry, Dennis Butler. The Physics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. Hogg, Richard. 1992. A Grammar of Old English, Vol I: Phonology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Jiménez, Jesus. and Maria-Rosa Lloret. “Andalusian Vowel Harmony: Weak Triggers and Perceptiblity.” ROA 901, 2007. Jones, Charles. “Rounding and Fronting in Old English Phonology: A Dependency Approach.” Folia Linguistica Historica 1 (1980): 125-37. ______. A History of English Phonology. London: Longman, 1989. I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1063
Kaplan, Aaron. Noniterativity is an Emergent Property of Grammar. Diss. U of California, Santa Cruz, 2008. Kaun, Abigail. 1995. The Typology of Rounding Harmony: An Optimality Theoretic Approach. Diss. UCLA, 1995. Kirchner, Robert. “Turkish Vowel Harmony and Disharmony: An Optimality Theoretic Analysis.” ROA 4, 1993. Klein, Thomas. Umlaut in Optimality Theory: A Comparative Analysis of German and Chamorro. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000. Kra¨mmer, Martin. “A Correspondence Approach to Vowel Harmony and Disharmony.” ROA 293, 1998. Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. Lass, Roger. Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. Lass Roger and John Anderson. 1975. Old English Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975. Levitt, H. “The Acoustics of Speech Production.” Auditory Management of Hearing-impaired Children. Ed. Mark Ross and Thomas Giolas. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1978. 45-115. Maddieson, Ian. “Typology of Phonological System.” Ed. Jaejung Song. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. 534-48. McCarthy, John. “OT Constraints Are Categorical.” Phonology 20 (2003): 75- 138. ______. “Harmony in Harmonic Serialism.” ROA 1009, 2009a. ______. “Autosegmental Spreading in Optimality Theory.” ROA 1050, 2009b. McCarthy, John. and Alan Prince. Prosodic Morphology I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. ms. U of Massachusetts, Amherst and Rutgers U, New Brunswick, 1993. ______. “Faithfulness and Reduplicative Identity.” U of Massachusetts Occasional Working Papers 18. Ed. Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey and Suzanne Urbanczyk. Amherst: GLSA, 1995. 249-384. Mitchell, Bruce. and Fred Robinson. A Guide to Old English. New York: Blackwell, 2001. Moon, An-Nah. Aspects of Old English Prosody. Diss. New York U, 1996. ______. “The Pronunciation of in Old English: Palatalization and Umlaut.” English Language and Literature (47-4) (2001): 1147-71. Padget, Jaye. “Feature Classes.” U of Massachusetts Occasional Working Papers 18. Ed. Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey and Suzanne Urbanczyk. Amherst: GLSA, 1995. 385-420. Poliquin, Gabriel. Canadian French Vowel Harmony. Diss. Harvard U, 2006. Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky. Optimality Theory. ms. Rutgers U, New 1064 An-Nah Moon
Brunswick and U Colorado, Boulder, 1993. Prokosch, Eduard. A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America, 1939. Pulleyblank, Douglas. “Yoruba Vowel Patterns: Deriving Asymmetries by the Tension between Opposing Constraints.” ROA 270, 1998. Revithiadou, Anthi., Marc. van. Oostendorp, Kalomira Nikolou and aira-Anna Tiliopoulou. “Vowel Harmony in Contact-induced Systems: The Case of Asia Minor Dialects of Greek.” ROA 731, 2005. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. “On the Major Class Features and Syllable Theory.” Language Sound Structure. Ed. Mark Aronoff and Ricard Oehrle. Cambridge: MIT P, 1984. 107-36 Walker, Rachel. “Vowel Feature Licensing at a Distance: Evidence from Northern Spanish Language Varieties.” WCCFL 23 Proceedings. Eds. Vineeta Chand, Ann Kelleher, Angelo J. Rodríguez, and Benjamin Schmeiser. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2004. 787-800. ______. “Weak Triggers in Vowel Harmony.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23 (2005): 917-989. Wright, Joseph and Elizabeth Wright. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1925. UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID) http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid_info.html. retrieved in on April, 20, 2011. ROA: Rutgers Optimality Archive
*Received: May 16, 2011. / Review Requested: May 20, 2011. / Accepted: July 30, 2011. I-Umlaut in Old English: A Weak Trigger Effect 1065
Abstract This study investigates i-umlaut which occurred in the period of pre Old English (OE) in two aspects: what motivates i-umlaut in OE and how the phenomenon can be analyzed within the framework of OT. Unlike root-controlled vowel harmony, i-umlaut in OE is triggered by the suffixal i or j in the unstressed syllable whereby a stressed root vowel becomes fronted or raised. In this study, it is proposed that i-umlaut in OE is driven by the weak trigger i or j to improve its poor perception: I-umlaut improves the poor perceptibility of the weak trigger by extending its feature—either [-back] or [-low]—onto the vowel in the stressed syllable. This study provides an OT-theoretic analysis utilizing the licensing account to vowel harmony proposed by Walker (2004, 2005). The licensing constraints, IDENT-IO(F) and the locally conjoined constraints are proposed and their interaction correctly captures the pat- tern of i-umlaut in OE. Also, it is shown that the licensing account pro- posed in this paper is superior to the previous analyses as well as the nonlicensing approaches in that it can provide a perceptual motivation couched in i-umlaut in OE.
