Hi Gaël,

in the dative singular there is no breaking (and so no "cluster /ji/") only i-umlaut, as you rightly guessed. The original root vowel *e (*skelduz or *skelduR) was fronted to /i/ because of the dat.sing. ending -i (skildi).
Concerning breaking: this is a case of u-breaking, where *e > /jö/ (I write ö instead of the "o with the hook"). It is possible that *e turned first into *ea (this is the kind of breaking that you find in Old English: the same word in OE is "sceald"). But this is u-umlaut, i.e. *e > /jö/ (because of influx of an unstressed /u/), whereas a-umlaut is *e > /ja/ (no /u/ but /a/). Some linguists argue that there is no u-breaking though, but only a-breaking, and that the resulting diphtong /ja/ was later turned into /jö/ by u-umlaut. This makes slightly more sense to me, but u-breaking remains the traditional and most widely accepted explanation.

Kveðja,
Diego


--- Den søn 2008-12-14 skrev Gaël DEEST <gael.deest@...>:
Fra: Gaël DEEST <gael.deest@...>
Emne: Re: [norse_course] Re: U-mutation in nom. acc. singular of strong masculine nouns
Til: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Dato: Søndag 14. desember 2008 11.41

Actually, I have another question regarding skjöldr:

*skelduz > *skealduz > ON skjöldr "shield"

I'm pretty sure the process that turned the root vowel "e" into "ea"
is an example of breaking. I think the "e" turned into the sound "i"
which transformed into the semi-vowel "j" to produce "skjöldr" (right
?). However the dat.sg, nom. and acc. pl have the root vowel "i"
instead. How did this happen ? My guess is that the root was subject
to i-mutation, as in *arni > erni, but the vowel cluster "ji"
simplified into "i". Do you confirm ?

Thank you,

Gaël



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