Note 148 — VIII Language as a Historical Product: Phonetic Law

Footnote 148: Anglo-Saxon fet is “unrounded” from an older föt, which is phonetically related to fot precisely as is mys (i.e., müs) to mus. Middle High German ue (Modern German u) did not develop from an “umlauted” prototype of Old High German uo and Anglo-Saxon o, but was based directly on the dialectic uo. The unaffected prototype was long o. Had this been affected in the earliest Germanic or West-Germanic period, we should have had a pre-German alternation fot: föti; this older ö could not well have resulted in ue. Fortunately we do not need inferential evidence in this case, yet inferential comparative methods, if handled with care, may be exceedingly useful. They are indeed indispensable to the historian of language.