Re: Verner’s Law could be a result of interfamilial contact

From: jouppe
Message: 57398
Date: 2008-04-15

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
wrote:

Wilk also proposes a few other
> > FU-substratum features in Germanic—for example, umlaut as a reflex
> > vowel harmony.

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Umlaut is too late to be explained by FU vowel harmony. There
certainly was no Uralic sub-stratum in the Proto-Norse areas when
umlaut worked in the second half of the first millenium AD, not to
even think of West-Germanic areas.
As to the dating: Proto-Norse borrowings into Finnic still don't show
any umlaut. Even allophonic umlaut, pre-phonemicized, is clearly
absent in Proto-Norse borrowings: cf. valtio 'state', kari 'skerry'

Jouppe
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