Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 97
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in fact almost a casual, effect of a change of quite another
type, the reduction of unstressed vowels. Since there was thus
no direct causal relationship between the two stages, the way
was open for regarding them as widely different in their chro-
nology: while phonemic umlaut no doubt took place in the
early history of each group of Germanic languages, phonetic
umlaut has been assumed to go much further back, even all
the way to Proto-Germanic times (see, e.g., Twaddell 1948:
HÐ'tö0) Antonsen 1964: 179-182, 1967:25).
However, although the distinction between the two stages
°f a sound change is no doubt valuable in principle, too
drastic consequences should not be ascribed to it. In par-
ticular, the chronological difference should not be overempha-
sized. As regards umlaut, one should not forget that in High
German the earliest stage of the vowel syncope, viz., after a
long syllable, did not produce a phonemic split, not even of
a> cf., for instance, inf. stellen ‘to place’, brennen ‘to burn’,
wenten ‘to turn’, trenken ‘to give to drink’, pret. stalta, branta,
Wanta, trancta (<*stalliðe, *branniðé, *wandiðé, *drankiðé). Ifwe
are to ascribe any linguistic reality at all to the distinction
between the phonetic and the phonemic stage, this can only
niean that phonetic f-umlaut had not begun in Old High
German at the time of the earliest syncope. Further, as regards
the relationship between the two stages or their mutual in-
dependence, one should not forget the morphological im-
plications of umlaut for the morphological categories repre-
sented earlier by the unstressed syllables with the umlaut-
producing vowels. Some remarks about these will be offered
beiow (§5.1).
2-2. Closely related to this is the observation that two or
more changes may be phonetically similar, but phonemically
quite different and therefore not to be designated by the same
term; that is, they may be similar or parallel in their strictly
phonetic manifestation, for instance, as far as their results are
concerned, but relationally quite different, as regards both the