Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 107
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tion of a pattern of phonetic variants, ultimately resulting in
new distinctive oppositions; the other process was inverse.
33. Closely related to the point discussed in the preceding
section is the necessity to distinguish, for each phonological
change, between on the one hand the change itself, and on
the other hand the subsequent relationships contracted, within
the phonological system, by the units resulting from the
change in question. In other words, the phonemic units con-
stituting the outcome of what in § 3.2 was called a positive
change will inevitably bear certain relations to the other
units of the system in question, and may thus take part in a
phonological reorganization which has no direct, intrinsic
connections with the change itself.
A clear example is provided by the M-umlaut of a, short
and long, in the Nordic languages. The result of this change
was a phonemic split of a into a and g according to the
formula in § 1.1. The phonetic aspect of the change was a
conditioned rounding of the vowel, e.g. sing. *[landa] ‘land’
vs- plur. ^[lpndu], with the rounded variant [0] conditioned
by the u of the following syllable. Then the loss of unstressed
vowels, including a and u, resulted in the phonemicization
9 '■a, plur. Ipnd vs. sing. land. The position of these two units
ln the vowel system may be seen in the diagram in § 1.1.
However, in the immediate postumlaut stage, the distinc-
hon between a and g was not present in one position, viz.,
before an unstressed u in the following syllable; in other words,
ln this position the opposition of the two was neutralized.
Historically speaking this was a consequence of the fact that
PN u of any origin (that is, not only representing PG u as,
e-g., in the acc. sing. vgnd< *wandu, but also PG 5 as in plur.
lgnd< *lando) produced «-umlaut. Therefore, before an u that
Was preserved the opposition a:g never arose, since w-umlaut
took place in all such cases; nowhere in the Nordic-speaking
area do we find a distinction such as, for example, between
a dat. plur. Igndum and a different form *landum.