Nordic Umlaut and Breaking Thirty Years of Research (1951–1980)

Abstract

The article contains a critical survey of Nordic umlaut research during the last thirty years. An attempt is made to evaluate the various contributions to this research which have been based, alternately, on structural generative phonological theory; in contrast to the earlier heavily datae-based research, recent work in this field has indeed been more exclusively theory- oriented. that the results of these ene deavors have on the whole not been commensurate with the effort; in spite of the evident optimism which, at certain times at any rate, has dominated this research, it apperars indeed that some of the traditional or classical problems of Nordic umlaut research tend to persist, or continually toreappear, in one guise or another, and thus to continue to defy a convincing solution.