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One would be inclined to surmise that these dialectic forms go back to old Germanic or West-Germanic alternations of the same type. But the documentary evidence shows conclusively that there could have been no plurals of this type in primitive Germanic. In the Middle High German period the mutation was carried through in all dialects.
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.
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