Thanks all! I finally found the right place for these questions, it seems.

Everything you wrote was relevant, and it will take me a while to digest
things. But let me answer on a few points:

Yes, the book is from 1994. It's a fairly modern liguistic treatment
of Old English and related matters. The book is intended to help students
move from primers to the "standard" works on Old English like Campbell's
grammar, and to the larger Germanic picture. Overall, it does a good
job. I'm a linguist (but no specialist in Germanic), so it helps me to
see the connections, instead of just being given the paradigms to learn.

/e/ and /i/--yes, Gordon (9) mentions forms like <skipeno> for <skipinu>.
By the way, what does the First Grammatical Treatise show for such vowels?

I have seen systems for learning old languages where an "underlying"
form is given, along with a set of rules to apply. The output is more
or less the attested forms. I thought maybe that what was Lass was doing.
E.g. dative singular of a-stems is /e/, i-umlaut does not apply, later
rule changes final unstressed /e/ to /i/, and you have dat. sing. <harmi>.
Mostly this repeats the historical development. I suppose for consonant-
stems the "underlying" dat. sing. is /i/, but the i-umlaut rule does
not apply if the stem ends in more than one consonant, so /foeti/ but
/nagli/.

By the way, Gordon is good but very "compressed." What other words are
there in Old Icelandic like /foeti/?

I understand that for a-stem dat. sg. /degi/ the change is due to the
palatal consonant +/i/ (Gordon 38). What other nouns could be given as
examples of this change?

>> N sun-r for son-r
>> G son-ar
>> D syn-e for syn-i
>> A sun for son
>> pl.
>> N syn-er for syn-ir
>> G son-a
>> D sun-um
>> A sun-o for sun-u
>
>He seems to be going for the most archaic forms. You notice he only
>uses the a-mutated forms where there is an /a/ in the ending. This
>is rather theoretical and hardly well attested in the mss.

Thanks! It's clear now that you point it out.

>> 1 b�r-a
>> 2 b�r-er
>> 3 b�r-e
>> pl
>> 1 b�r-em
>> 2 b�r-e�
>> 3 b�r-e
>
>This is subjunctive past tense and perfectly correct.

Yes, I messed that up--I only realized the mistake after I had sent the
message.

Lass gives the preterite indic. of /bara/ with root vowel /a/ in the
singular, root vowel LONG /�/ (hook o) for the plural. He says the pret.
subj. vocalism is the same (his examples are Gothic, OE, and OIc) as
the pret. pl. indicative vocalism. He fails to note that his OIc example
shows i-umlaut for the pret. subj. so LONG /�/ (hook o)> � > � final
step is i-umlaut) giving the vocalism for the pret. subj.
(Gordon 8 and 34).

>(Note that you seem to be mistaking '�' for small thorn.)

Maybe it's my eyes. Is <�> the right character? Lass selects one character
and uses it throughout these paradigms. I don't criticize this, since
the Icelandic alternation is predictable and not important to what Lass
is trying to do in the book.

Yes, for 9 and 10 it is ni� and ti�, with accented vowels. Maybe this
is a combination of liguistic archaeology and misprints.

Lass's book is available on Amazon, and I bought my copy in the local
bookstore. It is interesting and useful for the linguistically-minded
non-specialist. As I said, there are lots of misprints, some of them
significant. With you help, I now see that many of the OIc forms are
not misprints, but a reflection of a different approach. Still, I think
it would be better to give "classical" OIc forms in a book like this.
The forms I was questioning seem better suited to a detailed discussion
of OIc for advanced students.

I am writing up all the points I question in this book, and will eventually
mail them to Lass, in case there is a second edition. I am sure to learn
something in the process! If anybody here wants to use Lass's book and
would like my comments, I will send them, upon request, when I have them
done.

Again, thank all of you for responding. I'm pleasantly surprised to find
such patient and expert help.

Gazariah