This paper provides a new phonological and philological analysis of previously unexplained disharmonic patterns in Old Norwegian height harmony. Old Norwegian displays crosslinguistically rare forms of blocking and transparency, which under traditional assumptions of Old Norwegian vowels and vowel harmony are both phonologically and orthographically irregular. I show that these patterns make perfect phonological sense if we reinterpret the Old Norwegian neutral vowels æ–ǫ as [−low, −ATR] /E, O/ and assume that Old Norwegian height harmony was relativized to [high] contrastive visibility and bounded by high-sonority elements, resulting in the transparency of [high] non-contrastive items and blocking by highsonority [+low] vowels. This featural interpretation fits with the later diachronic development of Old Norwegian vowels and additionally helps explain patterned spelling variation found in both roman and runic writing.

中文翻译：

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旧挪威高度和谐中的透明度和阻塞

本文对旧挪威语高度和谐中以前无法解释的不和谐模式进行了新的语音和语言学分析。古挪威语显示了跨语言罕见的阻塞和透明形式，在古挪威语元音和元音和声的传统假设下，这些形式在语音和拼写上都是不规则的。我表明，如果我们将古挪威语中性元音 æ–ǫ 重新解释为 [−low, −ATR] /E, O/ 并假设古挪威语高度和谐相对于 [high] 对比可见度和有界由 highsonority 元素，导致 [high] 非对比项的透明度和 highsonority [+low] 元音阻塞。