--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2007-01-14 14:26, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Does English have instances of w-umlaut (cf the Frisian forms)?
>
> The only kind of back umlaut found in Old English was the
> diphthongisation of front vowels if there was a back vowel in the
> following syllable: i > io, e > eo, and æ > ea (in dialects with the
> "second fronting" of *a), cf. *siBun > siofon '7'. The /y/ of <dyde>
> can't have arisen via any such change. Incidentally, in Anglian and
> Anglian-influenced varieties of OE (mostly in Northumbrian) one also
> finds pl. <de:don> beside <dydon> (the latter is presumably an
> innovation based on <dyde> interpreted as a weak preterite).
According to Wright's OHG Primer
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/etc/aa_texts.html
the preterite of 'tuon' is inflected like a preterite of class V,
except 1,3sg is reduplicated (in WGerm. 2sg goes with the pl.)
Class V is the <e, a, a:, e> class, eg
geban, gab, ga:bum, geben,
PIE *<e, o, e:, e>,
ghebh-, ghobh-, ghe:bh-, ghebh-
modified from the standard
PIE *<e, a, zero, zero>
ghebh-, gheghobh-, gheghbh-, ghbh-
by leaving out the second occurrence of the root initials in the
difficultly analyzable 3rd form and reinserting an -e- in the fourth.
Let's assume that verb was originally *dhegh- (cf Proto-Uralic *teke-
"do", *toGe- "bring")
It would have been inflected
dhégh-, dhédhogh-, dhedhgh´-, dhgh´-
then, metathesis (cf. dhghóm -> ghdhóm)
dhégh-, dhédhogh-, dheghdh´-, ghdh´-
now, the same fix in the third form as before, but no de-duplication
in the second
dhégh-, dhédhow-, dhe:dh´-, dhVgh-
with some vowel inserted in the fourth form
Torsten