Palatal Umlaut (i-Umlaut)

Back vowels a, o, u(long and short) if followed by ior jin the next syllable became fronted.

a(long and short) >æ(long and short)

o(long and short) > oe(long and short)

u(long and short) > y(long and short)

These new vowels were phonemic variants of the corresponding back vowels as long as i, j survived. Since in the course of later development i and jwere lost (or survived in the form of e), these new sounds became different phonemes already in OE period. The later development of æ(long and short) > eand oe(long and short) > esealed this differentiation.

Note: i, causing umlaut should be unstressed.

Examples:

a > æ,later e Goth. batiza – OE betera

L. angli – OE engle

o > oe, later e L. oléum (масло) – OE ele, œele

u > y Finish cuningas – OE cynin™

ā >æGoth. lāisjan – OE læran

ō > oe > ē Goth. fōdjan – OE fēdan

ū >y OS l ūttil – lyttel

Exeptions.The absence of mutation may be due to different causes.

1) The main cause in the failure of chronological coincidence.

e.g. folcisk (folk) – was formed after the action of i-umlaut.

2) The restoration of unmutated vowels from cognate words.

e.g. OE mōdi™ (brave) from noun mōd (because the root of the noun mōd was taken to the adjective by analogy).

3) No mutation occurred if i was stressed.

e.g. ānlíc (only) – a didn’t change into æ.

Some diphthongs were affected by mutation too. This change is observed particularly in the degrees of comparison of adjectives. The change is due to the fact that originally the suffixes of the comparatives were *is and *ista, and i caused mutation of the root vowel.

ea > ie eald – ieldest

eo > ie ™eon™ – ™in™ra – ™in™est