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Paradigm Resolution in the Life Cycle of Norse Umlaut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2012

Gregory K. Iverson  and
Joseph C. Salmons
Gregory K. Iverson*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Joseph C. Salmons*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
*
Department of Linguistics, Curtin Hall 529/535, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413, USA, [[email protected]]
Department of German, 818 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr., University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA, [[email protected]]
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Abstract

This paper follows on recent work (Iverson & Salmons 2004, 2007; Kiparsky 2005, 2006) seeking to resolve Kock's 1888 paradox intro-duced in his celebrated “period theory” of Old Norse i-umlaut. The basic finding is this: In paradigms where a phonological innovation has been rendered opaque by the operation of other sound changes, restructuring of the base form incorporates rather than derives the results of the innovation as it dies out; but if the innovation remains transparent in certain other paradigms, its expiration enables reversion to the antecedent phonological form. Both patterns can be subsumed under the traditional rubric of analogy, resulting in allomorphically uniform paradigms, but the former generalizes a sound change to con-texts in which it never occurred naturally, whereas the latter actually undoes, or reverses, a sound change.*

Type
ARTICLES
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 02 May 2012 , pp. 101 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2012

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