Vowel Changes: Umlaut and Breaking
A large part of the complexity of OIc. morphology is due to activity of the so-called “umlauts” and “breakings”. Whereas the previous term is merely a synonym of “vowel assimilation”, used in a more narrow sense, the interpretation of the latter term, “breaking”, has been a matter of debate, and the final solution has not been proposed yet (although it seems to show some similarity to umlauts).
That umlaut is in fact a type of assimilation can be illustrated with the following scheme of the some Icelandic vowels, describing the effects of u-umlaut on the vowels /i/ and /a/. This is shown below:
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When the back rounded vowel /u/ (or the bilabial consonant /w/) assimilated preceding non-back and unrounded vowels /i/ and /a/, new vowels /y/ and // arose (on this page we use o, to designate hook-o) . These new vowels had features of both the assimilating vowel /u/ (/w/) and the original vowels. From the assimilating vowel /u/ (/w/) the new vowels received their roundness, but /y/ retained the original frontness of /i/, and /o,/ remained non-high, just like the original /a/.
The umlauting vowel /u/ (or the cons. /w/) is in many instances preserved, cf. sögum ‘saga’ (dat. pl.) -- *sagum, or so,ngvar ‘songs’ (nom. pl.; -- *sang-w-ōR), but in other cases it disappeared still in the proto-language and needs to be assumed, cf. so,k ‘guilt’ -- *saku. In some cases, more than umlaut (or umlaut and breaking) could operate, cf. søkkva ‘sink (transitive v.)’ (-- *sankwijan; the root vowel /a/ is first u/w-umlauted and then the resulting */o,/ is i-umlauted to /ø/). In those word-forms, where the conditions for an umlaut did not exist, it, accordingly, did not occur, which resulted in different forms of the same word having different shapes (“allomorphy”), cf. so,k (nom. sg.) vs. sak-ar (gen. sg.), or sag-a (nom. sg.) vs. so,g-u (obl. sg.). In those cases, where more than one umlaut (or umlaut and breaking) operated, the number of allomorphs rose accordingly, cf. fjo,rður ‘fiord’ (nom. sg.; -- *ferþ-uR; u-breaking: e -- jo, /_Cu) vs. firði (dat. sg.; -- ferþ-ī; i-umlaut: e -- i /_Ci) vs. fjarðar (gen. sg.; -- *ferþ-aR; a-breaking: e -- a /_Ca). As a result, paradigms can become quite complex, cf. the ON paradigm for the noun fj o,rðr:
| Singular | Plural |
| firðir (-- *ferþ-īR) | |
| Acc. fjo˛rð (-- *ferþ-un) | fjo˛rðu (-- *ferþ-unn) |
| fjo˛rðum (-- *ferþ-umR) | |
| Gen.fjarðar (-- *ferþ-aR) | fjarða (-- *ferþ-a) |
In a number of cases, the vowels /a/ and /i/ do not influence vowels of preceding syllables in Icelandic, cf. þak-i ‘roof’ (dat. sg.; nom. sg. þak), not *þek-i, or skrif-a ‘write’ (inf.), not *skrefa, vera ‘be’ (inf.), not *vjara, etc. The reasons for absence of the expected phonological changes are multiple. In the case of þak-i and comparable dative forms, the explanation is simple: the vowel -i in such forms developed at a late stage from an earlier long vowel /ē/ that never caused any umlaut, and by the time this ē changed to i, i-umlaut no longer operated. In other instances, one has to assume various phonological constraints, e.g. now it is generally believed that breaking did not operate if the vowel e was preceded by the consonants /v/, /r/ and /l/. In still different cases, which cannot be explained by synchronic phonological constraints or prehistoric developments, one needs to assume analogy (see 2. below) and other explanations (such as borrowing, cf. OIc. skrifa ← Latin scribere).