Studies for Einar Haugen: Presented by Friends and Colleagues 9783110879131, 9789027923387

Table of contents :
PREFACE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
ICELANDIC U-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
AN ALEMANNIC "ATLAKVIDA"
THE RUNIC INSCRIPTION FROM OPEDAL
THE USE OF REX IN ÍSLENDINGABÓK
A COMPUTER CONCORDANCE TO EGILS SAGA SKALLA-GRÍMSSONAR
THE FIRST GRAMMATICAL TREATISE: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF ITS THEORY OF ORTHOGRAPHY
THE PRESENT PARTICIPLE IN THE ÍVENS SAGA
A LOOK AT EQUATIONS AND CLEFT SENTENCES
BEOWULF: ICGE AND INCGE ONCE MORE
LANGUAGE CONTACT IN PIEDMONT: ASPECTS OF ITALIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE SOUND SYSTEM OF PIEDMONTESE
SOME (GERMAN-ENGLISH) LANGUAGE CONTACT PHENOMENA AT THE DISCOURSE LEVEL
BILINGUALISM AND THE LEXICON
TONALITY IN SWEDISH: RULES AND A LIST OF MINIMAL PAIRS
UNSTABLE VOWELS IN SWEDISH: SYNCOPE, EPENTHESIS OR BOTH?
FORMANT FREQUENCIES OF LONG AND SHORT DANISH VOWELS
PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
ANATOMY OF A SKALDIC DOUBLE-ENTENDRE: RQGNVALDR KALI'S LAUSAVÍSA 7
CREOLE AND IMMIGRANT LANGUAGES: BASILECT + CODE SWITCHING, OR RESTRUCTURING?
A COMIC ROLE OF THE VIKING IN THE FAMILY SAGAS
HOW 'ARCHAIC' IS MODERN ICELANDIC?
CODE-SWITCHING AS ORDERED SELECTION
BISHOP HILL SWEDISH AFTER A CENTURY
A THEORY OF SPEECH ERRORS
THE ICELANDIC TRANSLATIONS FROM MIDDLE ENGLISH
A NOTE ON ALLITERATIVE PRACTICES IN GERMANIC VERSE
COMPARATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN GERMANIC OF THE OV TYPE
THE STRUCTURE OF THE SWEDISH NOMINAL PARADIGM
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND THE ßÁTTR: SPEAKER TAGGING
DIALINGUISTIC IDENTIFICATION
A NOTE ON THE WORD TONE IN SWEDISH COMPOUNDS
GERMANIC TERMS FOR TEMPLE AND CULT
A TEST STUDY IN RUNIC DIALECTOLOGY
BORROWED AND NATIVE CZECH PREFIXES
TWO SWEDISH REFLEXIVE CONSTRUCTIONS
RURAL AND URBAN DIALECTS IN A CORNER OF NORWAY
SPOKEN ESTONIAN IN SWEDEN AND THE USA: AN ANALYSIS OF BILINGUAL BEHAVIOR
MORPHOPHONEMIC NOTES ON THE MODERN ICELANDIC IMPERATIVE SINGULAR
ZUR PHONOLOGIE DES ALTHOCHDEUTSCHEN PSALM 138
A PHONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN
CONSONANT REDUCTION IN FAROESE NONCOMPOUND WORDFORMS
FAVORITORD, STYLISTIC VARIATION, ABSOLUTE PROSA, AND SUCHLIKE IN THE ÍSLENDINGASOGUR
PROBLEMS IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF SIGNS
NONSENSE INSCRIPTIONS IN SWEDISH UPPLAND
DEPENDENCE OF SELECTIONAL RESTRICTION ON CULTURAL SPACES
AN INDO-EUROPEAN WORD FOR 'DREAM'
A PROPOSAL CONCERNING METAPHOR
THE VIKING UNIVERSE

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA M E M O R I A E N I C O L A I VAN WIJK DEDICATA Series Maior,

59

Einar Haugen

Studies for Presented by friends and colleagues

Edited by

EVELYN S C H E R A B O N F I R C H O W KAAREN G R I M S T A D NILS HASSELMO WAYNE A. O ' N E I L

1972

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 72-88 979

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

PREFACE

In the present volume honoring Einar Haugen we have collected essays written by his colleagues, friends and students, to serve as a companion piece to Studies by Einar Haugen (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). The earlier collection contains selected articles spanning Einar Haugen's entire career to the present time. Studies for Einar Haugen likewise represents the scope of interests of the man it honors. It contains articles from the areas of linguistic theory, sociolinguistics — including bilingualism and language contact — philology, and medieval literature. Even so, we have not exhausted the range of Einar Haugen's scholarly endeavours, omitting for instance the fields of language pedagogy, modern Scandinavian literature, and American-Scandinavian cultural relations. Our colleagues in literature have already filled this particular gap by publishing a collection of studies dedicated to him, dealing with the latter twofields.* That scholars from many parts of the world have contributed to Studies for Einar Haugen reflects his role as an international scholar. His mind and his influence have, happily, never respected national borders. If therefore the variety of topics and languages of this collection has rendered the task of preparing it for publication occasionally somewhat trying, it has also been — as usual when working with Haugeniana — a richly rewarding and instructive experience. For all their help and cooperation we wish to express here our appreciation to all the contributors; and wish, too, to thank the Graduate School and the Center for Northeast European Language and Area Studies of the University ofMinnesota for providing intermittent clerical services; Stefan and Donna Ingvarsson, and Hans Hartvigson for help with the proofreading; C. H. van Schooneveld for including the volume in his Janua Linguarum, Series Maior ; and Peter de Ridder, editor of Mouton and Co., for publishing the volume without financial subsidy. Einar Haugen's lifelong dedication to Scandinavian Studies reaches back to his early childhood. His parents John and Kristine Haugen emigrated from the Oppdal area of the Trendelag in Norway in 1899, settling eventually in Sioux City, Iowa, * Harald S. Naess and Sigmund Skard, eds. Studies in Scandinavian-American Interrelations. Dedicated to Einar Haugen. (Americana Norvegica, vol. 3) Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1971.

6

PREFACE

which, despite its unpromising name, was a center of Norwegian-American culture. There Einar Haugen was born on April 19, 1906. Since his parents — both leading figures in the community — wished to preserve their native language and heritage, Einar Haugen grew up speaking Norwegian, learning English as a second language outside his home. In due course he was to enter the predominantly Norwegian St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he completed his studies for the B.A. in 1928. Even when shortly thereafter he left the overtly Norwegian sphere of influence in order to pursue graduate work under George T. Flom at the University of Illinois, he concentrated on the problem of New Norwegian and completed his dissertation on that subject in 1931. From 1931 to 1964 he taught at the University of Wisconsin, becoming Torger Thompson Professor of Scandinavian in 1938, and Vilas Research Professor in 1962. During the course of his thirty-three years at Wisconsin, Einar Haugen was the masterbuilder in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, which he chaired for most of this period. In 1964 he went east to Harvard University as Victor S. Thomas Professor of Scandinavian and Linguistics. Einar Haugen's prolific professional activities and honors provide an impressive index to his commitment to Scandinavian and Linguistics. In 1938 he was elected president of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study; in 1950 of the Linguistic Society of America; in 1965 of the American Dialect Society; and in 1962 of the "Ninth International Congress of Linguistics. He has served as president of the Permanent International Committee of Linguistics (CIPL) since 1966; was visiting lecturer (1938) and Fulbright research professor (1951-1952) at the University of Oslo; visiting professor at the University of Iceland (1955-1956); and adviser to the English Language Educational Council of Japan for their teachertraining programs (1958-1960). Among the many distinguished grants and fellowships he has received are awards from the Guggenheim Foundation (1942), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1967), the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (1963), as well as the National Science Foundation research grant (1967-1969). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Norwegian and Icelandic academies of science, and honorary member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Science, and belongs to the Order of St. Olaf, Norway (1940) and the Order of the North Star, Sweden (1961). He has received honorary degrees from the University of Michigan (1953), St. Olaf College (1958), the University of Oslo (1961), and the University of Iceland (1971). Einar Haugen has made a number of important contributions in several areas of scholarship. As one of the most active members of the Linguistic Society of America, he took part in the theoretical debate on the nature of structuralism which developed primarily in the society's journal Language. His articles on "Facts and Phonemics" (with W. F. Twaddell, 1942) and on the prosodeme (1949) display both his interest in linguistic theory and his concern that theory should not be allowed to develop in too rarefied an atmosphere. Characteristically, he strenuously combatted the tendency towards scholarly isolationism by putting the debate in the larger context of parallel

PREFACE

7

developments in North America and Europe. His address as president of the Linguistic Society in 1950 highlighted those efforts, with its stress on the connections between European and American structuralism. Einar Haugen has always had his feet on the ground. While slugging it out in theory he was also trudging about in the field, conducting the investigations among AmericanNorwegian immigrants and their descendants which resulted in his Norwegian Language in America in 1953. This work is still the most comprehensive study of an American immigrant language in its cultural setting. Together with its theoretical companion volume, Bilingualism in the Americas, 1956, and Uriel Weinreich's Languages in Contact, it provided the impetus for a wave of research on bilingualism and language contact. Einar Haugen's elaboration of a theory of bilingual description, including such notions as the diaphone and the diamorph, also inspired work in what later became known as contrastive linguistics within the field of language pedagogy. But above all, his studies of bilingualism made important contributions to the field of sociolinguistics, relating linguistic phenomena to the socio-cultural setting in which they were observed. Few worthwhile studies in this flourishing field from the 1960's onwards, fail to mention Einar Haugen's pioneering work. After having dealt with Norwegian in America, Einar Haugen turned his attention to Norway itself in Language Conflict and Language Planning: The Case of Modern Norwegian, 1966. For this purpose, he could draw on a life-long interest in Norwegian dialects and in the work of the man who almost single-handedly created New Norwegian, Ivar Aasen. His Ph. D. dissertation evaluated Ivar Aasen's effort to construct a standard language based on Norwegian dialects; and he has repeatedly returned to his study of Aasen's work, always with new insights. To skeptical modern readers he has been able to demonstrate Aasen's linguistic sophistication both as a fieldworker and as a theorist. To incredulous speakers of "standardized" languages he revealed the linguistic problems that can result from cultural subjugation and the difficulty of recapitulating in a few decades a linguistic development that in other countries has taken centuries. Again Einar Haugen furnished the impetus for new research, and provided legitimacy for the field of "language planning", long regarded as the playground of romantic charlatans. His work has supplied a paradigm for studies of the language problems of developing nations, now a flourishing branch of applied sociolinguistics. Besides his work on Aasen and Norwegian language planning, Einar Haugen has contributed significantly to such diverse aspects of Scandinavian linguistics as Old Norse phonology, and what he has termed "semi-communication" in Scandinavia, namely communication between Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes speaking their own languages. As a truly bi-cultural human link between the U.S. and Scandinavia, he has contributed not only to the Americans' awareness of developments in European linguistics, but also to the Scandinavians' awareness of American theoretical developments. For a man often praised for his lucid style and for never scorning a "pedagogical"

8

PREFACE

approach, it is only natural that Einar Haugen should be the author of several textbooks. Among them are Beginning Norwegian 1937, Reading Norwegian 1939, and Spoken Norwegian 1945 (revised with Kenneth Chapman in 1964). Of value to students of Norwegian are also his word count, Norwegian Word Studies 1942, and specially his Norwegian-English Dictionary 1965. Finally, Einar Haugen has been a translator from the Scandinavian languages into English. Among his translations are a collection of Icelandic sagas, Vinland 1941, The History of Norwegian Literature by H. Beyer 1956, four Icelandic plays, Fire and Ice 1967, and The Life of Ibsen by Halvdan Koht 1971. But no mere listing of his work and his honors can suggest the measure of the man or properly celebrate this great craftsman of the word. What he has inspired in others, this volume may in some small way testify. If somewhere there is a Valhalla for veterans of linguistic battles, Einar Haugen will occupy a prominent place in it. In his honor perhaps this homage by our house skald Eldvist inn blindi will serve as a fitting end to this beginning: BjQrt verör sòl at svartri, sekkr fold i mar dekkvan, brestr erfiöi Austra, allr glymr saer at fjQllom, äör enn hér haerri (haug enn) Einari (er byggöi einar Qrvar roeöu reinu) roeöandi myni fceöask.* Minneapolis, Minnesota June 1972

* With apologies to Arnórr I>órdarson.

Evelyn Scherabon Firchow Kaaren Grimstad Nils Hasselmo

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Abbreviations

5 12

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

Icelandic l/-Umlaut and Breaking in a Generative Grammar

13

THEODORE M. ANDERSSON

An Alemannic "Atlakvi5a"

31

ELMER H. ANTONSEN

The Runic Inscription from Opedal

46

HANS BEKKER-NIELSEN

The Use of Rex in Islendingabok

53

L. MICHAEL BELL

A Computer Concordance to Egils Saga Skalla-Grimssonar

58

HREINN BENEDIKTSSON

The First Grammatical Treatise: The Fundamentals of Its Theory of Orthography

69

FOSTER W . BLAISDELL, JR.

The Present Participle in the hens saga

86

DWIGHT BOLINGER

A Look at Equations and Cleft Sentences

96

FREDERIC G. CASSIDY

Beowulf : lege and Incge Once More

115

GIARENZO P. CLIVIO

Language Contact in Piedmont: Aspects of Italian Interference in the Sound System of Piedmontese

119

MICHAEL G. CLYNE

Some (German-English) Language Contact Phenomena at the Discourse Level

132

10

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KARL C. DILLER

Bilingualism and the Lexicon

145

CLAES-CHRISTIAN ELERT

Tonality in Swedish: Rules and a List of Minimal Pairs

151

STIG ELIASSON

Unstable Vowels in Swedish: Syncope, Epenthesis or Both?

174

ELI FISCHER-J0RGENSEN

Formant Frequencies of Long and Short Danish Vowels

189

JOSHUA A. FISHMAN

Problems and Prospects of the Sociology of Language

214

ROBERTA FRANK

Anatomy of a Skaldic Double-Entendre: Rognvaldr Kali's Lausavisa 7 . .

227

GLENN G. GILBERT

Creole and Immigrant Languages : Basilect + Code Switching, or Restructuring? 236 KAAREN GRIMSTAD

A Comic Role of the Viking in the Family Sagas

243

ULRICH GROENKE

How 'Archaic' Is Modern Icelandic?

253

NILS HASSELMO

Code-Switching as Ordered Selection

261

FOLKE HEDBLOM

Bishop Hill Swedish After a Century

281

ARCHIBALD A. HILL

A Theory of Speech Errors

296

PETER A. JORGENSEN

The Icelandic Translations from Middle English

305

HANS KURATH

A Note on Alliterative Practices in Germanic Verse

321

W . P. LEHMANN

Comparative Constructions in Germanic of the OV Type

323

JOHN LOTZ

The Structure of the Swedish Nominal Paradigm

331

PARDEE LOWE, JR.

Discourse Analysis and the J)àttr: Speaker Tagging

339

WILLIAM FRANCIS MACKEY

Dialinguistic Identification

349

BERTIL MALMBERG

A Note on the Word Tone in Swedish Compounds

361

TABLE OF CONTENTS

11

THOMAS L. MARKEY

Germanic Terms for Temple and Cult

365

JAMES MASSENGALE

A Test Study in Runic Dialectology

379

GOLDIE PIROCH MEYERSTEIN

Borrowed and Native Czech Prefixes

389

KIM NILSSON

Two Swedish Reflexive Constructions

409

MAGNE OFTEDAL

Rural and Urban Dialects in a Corner of Norway

419

ELS OKSAAR

Spoken Estonian in Sweden and the USA. An Analysis of Bilingual Behaviour 437 JANEZ ORESNIK

Morphophonemic Notes on the Modern Icelandic Imperative Singular

.

450

HERBERT PENZL

Zur Phonologie des Althochdeutschen Psalm 138

460

CARROLL E. REED

A Phonological History of Pennsylvania German

469

JORGEN RISCHEL

Consonant Reduction in Faroese Noncompound Wordforms

482

PAUL SCHACH

Favoritord, Stylistic Variation, Absolute Prosa, and Suchlike in the fslendingasögur 498 THOMAS A. SEBEOK

Problems in the Classification of Signs

511

CLAIBORNE W . THOMPSON

Nonsense Inscriptions in Swedish Uppland

522

C. F. a n d F. M. VOEGELIN

Dependence of Selectional Restrictions on Cultural Spaces

535

CALVERT WATKINS

An Indo-European Word for "Dream"

554

WERNER WINTER

A Proposal Concerning Metaphor

562

CECIL WOOD

The Viking Universe

568

ABBREVIATIONS

AA ALH ANF ANOH APS AS AUMLA BSLP FFC FLang IF UAL IT JapQ JASA JP MLN MM NB NTS NTTS NysS PBB

American Anthropologist Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal ofStructural Linguistics (Copenhagen) Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi Aarbeger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie Acta Philologica Scandinavica American Speech Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris Folklore Fellows Communications Foundations of Language (Dordrecht, Neth.) Indogermanische Forschungen International Journal of American Linguistics Islenzk Tunga Japan Quarterly Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Journal of Philosophy Modern Language Notes Maal og Minne Namn och Bygd Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap Nordisk Tidsskrift for Tale og Stemme Nysvenska Studier Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, ed. by Hermann Paul and Wilhelm Braune. PsychologR Psychological Review RF Romanische Forschungen Sei Scripta Islandica SL Studio Linguistica (Lund) SS Scandinavian Studies ZDA Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur ZMF Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung ZPSK Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung ZRP Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (Halle) Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung zvs

ICELANDIC m-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR*

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

I. The «-umlaut alternation. The process of w-umlaut has been one of the most discussed topics in Scandinavian historical linguistics, and has generated a vast literature. It is still completely productive in Modern Icelandic, in the rule that produces alternations like those in 1: 1.

a. b. c. d.

fata 'pail'; fotu 'id., oblique sg. cases' stad 'place, acc.sg.'; stodum 'id., d.pl.' fagran 'beautiful, m. acc. sg.'; fogru 'id., n. d. sg.' Qiann) vakti 'he woke'; (peir) voktu 'they woke'

The alternation between a and o appears to be conditioned by the presence of a u in the following syllable. We could, then, assume that the forms in 1 have the vowel a in their underlying forms, and that a rule like 2 appears in the grammar: 2.

a -* d I

C„w

There are numerous apparent exceptions to this principle, which fall into two main classes: cases in which a remains before u, and cases in which an o alternating with a is not followed by u. The apparently non-umlauting M'S are nearly all found before r, most notably in the commonest ending of the nom. sg. of strong nouns and adjectives: 3.

a. b. c. d.

dagur 'day' gladur 'happy, m.nom.sg.' akur 'field' fagur 'beautiful, m.nom.sg.'

Other forms of words like 3 c,d (e.g. akri 'field, d.sg.'; fagran 'beautiful, m.acc.sg.') show that the -ur sequences in these words are part of the stem, rather than an ending (cf. degi 'day, d.sg.'; gladan 'happy, m.acc.sg.' etc.) * This work has been supported in part by a National Defense Education Act fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by the Language Research Foundation. I would like to thank Hreinn Benediktsson, Morris Halle, and Calvert Watkins for comments on earlier versions of this work. It seems safe to assert that none of them would agree with all of what I have to say, and they should not accordingly be held responsible for it.

14

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

We could deal with the -ur sequences which do not produce umlaut, as in 3, in either of two ways: we could simply mark them as exceptions to «-umlaut, or we could attempt to find a different representation for them which would be converted to -ur by other rules of the language after the «-umlaut rule has already applied. The first solution would simply be a restatement of the problem, and we should seek if at all possible to find an explanation elsewhere in the grammar. In any case, it would not be possible simply to mark the forms in 3 as exceptions to rules: the contrast between fagran and fogru shows that this word does, in fact, undergo the rule in some cases, and hence cannot be [-(«-umlaut)]; but the form fagur must not undergo the rule, although the -ur here is part of the root. When we compare the non-umlauting ending -ur of the nom. sg. of words like dagur (which is shown to be an ending by acc. sg. dag, as opposed to acc. sg. akur of akur) with umlauting endings of similar shape, such as the -um of the dative plural, we see two differences. Firstly, while most endings beginning with a vowel (e.g. -um 'dat. pi.'; -ar 'gen.sg.'; -ar 'nom.pl.'; -a 'gen.pl.'; -i (=/-e/) 'dat.sg.') retain this vowel after a stem ending in a vowel, resulting in the loss of a lax stem-final vowel, the ending -ur 'nom.sg.' loses its u, with retention of the stem vowel. Consider the paradigms of Ixknir 'doctor' and snjor 'snow': 4. N. A. D. G. b. N. A. D. G.

a.

singular Ixknir Ixkni Ixkni Ixknis snjór snjó snjó snjóar

plural Ixknar lxkna Ixknum lxkna snjóar snjóa snjóum snjóa

In 4, the plural endings (which are all vocalic) and the alternative gen. sg. ending -ar all preserve their vowels, while the nom. sg. -ur appears simply as -r. To account for this difference, we might be tempted to argue that the nom. sg. ending does not, in fact, begin with a vowel in its underlying form. Another difference between the problematic -ur and most ordinary vocalic endings appears after stems ending in r, /, n, or s. Here the ending (usually) appears assimilated to the final consonant of the stem: 5. a. humar 'lobster' (/humar+Nsg/) b. djofull 'devil' (/djoful+Nsg/) c. jotunn 'giant' (/jotun+Nsg/) d. is 'ice' (/is+Nsg/) e. lax (=[laks]) 'salmon' (/laks+Nsg/) This regularity is phonologically predictable, and we will need rules of the following sort to perform the assimilations:

W-UMLAUT A N D BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

6.

a.

+son +cor —nas -lat

t

anasl plat J

+son +cor anas Plat

15

+

(i.e. r becomes / after /, and n after ri) b.

+ cor +son -> -lat —nas

0

+cor +cont / +dist —lat

+.

(i.e. r is deleted after r or s) In addition, if -ur — /-ur/, we will need a rule to delete u after the same set of segments. Suppose we take -ur to be underlying /-r/, however: then we need simply a rule to insert u between a consonant and r, ordered AFTER the assimilations of 6: 0 —* u j C_

f*}

This rule, besides being simpler than the deletion rule required by the other analysis, can explain the other peculiarities of the -ur ending: since it is restricted to the position after a consonant, it accounts for the fact that -ur behaves as non-vocalic after a stemfinal vowel, and if it is ordered after the «-umlaut rule (2), this will account for the failure of these -ur sequences to produce umlaut. Accordingly, the exceptions to rule 2 in 3 turn out not to be exceptions at all, on independent grounds. The other kind of apparent exceptions is the class of forms in which a alternates with d, but no u appears in the forms with o to explain the alternation. These are not, of course, exceptions to rule 2, but rather to the stronger claim that ALL A/O alternations (and perhaps all instances of o in any form) are produced by rule 2. This class of forms includes those in 8: 8.

a. barn 'child'; born 'children' b. tagl 'horsetail'; togl 'horsetails' c. song 'song, acc. sg.' d. stod 'station' (cf. stadur 'place')

It can, in fact, be argued (cf. Anderson, 1969 for discussion) that these forms too have an underlying -u, which is later deleted in many environments. This -u in fact shows up in some forms: in most monosyllabic light syllable roots, and those ending in a velar, the u appears as v before vocalic endings (cf. stodvar, stodvum, parallel to 8d, and songvar, songvum parallel to 8c). While it will not be argued here, we will assume that all instances of a/d alternations, as well as many other instances of non-alternating o in productive categories, involve the operation of rule 2, perhaps followed by a deletion of u.

16

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

In addition to the aid alternations just discussed, rule 2 is responsible for an alternation between a and u in some forms: 9.

a. medal 'drug'; medulum 'id., dat.pl.' b. herad 'region'; herudum 'id., dat. pi.'

The a/u alternation in 9 appears in unstressed syllables, while the a/o alternation in 1, etc., appears primarily in stressed syllables. In some forms, both alternations appear. 10.

a. fatnadur 'suit (of clothes)';fdtnudum 'id., dat.pl.' b. safnadar 'congregation, gen.sg.'; sofnudum 'id., dat.pl.'

Observing that the vowel system of unstressed syllables is considerably less rich than that of stressed syllables, we can reduce these two alternations to a single one. In general, unstressed syllables can contain only a, i, or u. We could, accordingly, assume the existence of a rule that reduces other vowels to one of these when unstressed: 11.

[+syll] -> [+high] / —low —stress This rule will convert unstressed e to i; o to u (=w), and o to u. The first of these effects can be used to distinguish i-umlauting occurrences of phonetic i from nonumlauting ones (such as the -i of the dative singular, underlyingly /-e/) as argued in Anderson 1969; the second will predict that the alternation a/o will show up as aju in unstressed syllables, as of course it does. No instances of o>u are known; as will be seen, it is highly unlikely that any purpose could be served by positing any o's as source for surface u. 11. The environment of the rule. Given that both the aid and a/w alternations can be produced in the same way, by rule 2, let us consider how to account for the forms in which both occur at once. One suggestion might be that rule 2 should be reformulated so as to affect not only a vowel in a syllable immediately preceding an u but also one two syllables away: 12.

a

o'/

(C0V)C0m

That this is not the case is shown by forms like akkeri 'anchor', with dative plural akkerum: here we see that a vowel two syllables away from the umlauting u is not affected unless the intervening syllable is too. Accordingly, we might suggest a restriction on rule 12: suppose we require that the vowel intervening be an a as well. 13.

a-* o I

(C„a)C0M

Unfortunately, rule 13 should expand (on current views about notational conventions, for which cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968) to two rules, which should then be applied disjunctively: the result of applying 13 to, e.g. /fatnad+um/, would be not the correct /fotnoS+um/ (later becoming fdtnudum by rule 11), but rather */fotna5+um/. We

«-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

17

must, then, give up either the formulation 13 of the «-umlaut rule or the principle of disjunctive order. The approach to this problem generally taken by the traditional grammars of Icelandic and Old Norse is to divide the operation of «-umlaut into (at least) two stages: first a change of a to u in unaccented syllables followed by u, and then a later change a to d in accented syllables before u. Thus, the form fotnudum is the result of applying both «-umlaut processes. This solution will work, of course, but it clearly misses a generalization about the relation of the two umlaut rules. By requiring the statement of two entirely separate rules, this approach implicitly claims that any connection between them is completely accidental. The two rules 14 are no simpler than those in 15, yet the pair in 14 is related as the others are not: 14.

15.

b. a -* o /

C0w

a. e o/ b. i -* ù /

Cau Cau

In fact, the umlaut alternations in stressed and unstressed syllables are related in exactly the way we would expect, given the relation between the stressed and unstressed vowel systems of Icelandic. That is, in light of the process of vowel reduction (rule 11), we would expect an alternation ajo in stressed syllables to show up as aju (phonetically [a]/[ii]) in unstressed syllables. The relation between them is not a fact about the umlaut rule, as is implicitly claimed in the formulation 14, but is rather an automatic consequence of the independently needed rule of vowel reduction. Accordingly, we must reject the formulation of the rule as two separate processes. There is, however, a substantial element of correctness in the traditional proposal. Notice that the essential part of it is the claim that the reason umlaut can affect more than one syllable in fotnudum is that the result of its application to the second syllable is (eventually) a vowel «that could itself have conditioned the alternation. That is, it is precisely because the first vowel in the form is followed by u (after the operation of «-umlaut and vowel reduction) that it has undergone umlaut itself. This result could be obtained quite satisfactorily without splitting up the rule as 14 if we could simply allow rule 2 to apply at more than one point in a derivation. We might, for example, say that rule 2 applies at any point where its environment is met before the operation of rule 7 (w-epenthesis). The derivation of fotnudum, then, would proceed as follows: 16.

underlying form: output, rule 2: output, rule 11 : output, rule 2:

/fatnaQ+um/ /fatnod+um/ /fatnu5+um/ /fotnu5+um/

18

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

Such a solution is not, of course, available within the traditional framework of generative phonological description (e.g. Chomsky and Halle 1968); it has been argued elsewhere, however (in Anderson forthcoming and a number of other publications), that the approach to ordering relations taken in earlier work is incorrect, and that a different theory, the theory of LOCAL ORDERING, should replace the notion of LINEAR ORDER. The analysis of «-umlaut here, if substantially correct, provides further evidence for the theory of local ordering. Within that theory, the ordering statement above can be expressed by applying «-umlaut in an unmarked order with respect to all of the other rules (including rule 11) except rule 7, with which it is applied in a marked ordering. The essential correctness of the claim that it is the u produced by umlaut in the second syllable that affects the a in the first syllable is demonstrated by the existence of a number of forms which are exceptional with respect to vowel reduction. That is, there are a number of forms in which the vowel 6 appears as the result of «-umlaut in an unstressed syllable: 17.

a. b. c. d.

almanak 'calendar'; almandkum 'id., dat.pl.' akarn 'acorn'; akdrnum 'id., dat.pl.' Japani 'Japanese'; Japonum 'id., dat.pl.' apaldur 'apple tree'; apoldum 'id., dat.pl.'

The failure of these forms to undergo vowel reduction may be due to the presence of a secondary or lower stress (about which little is known), but whatever the reason, the essential point to observe is this: in precisely the forms in which vowel reduction does not apply, only one a can be affected. This is exactly what is predicted by the solution proposed here: only the penultimate vowel can be affected in the forms in 17 because this is the only vowel which ever appears in a syllable preceding u. The examples in 17 afford an opportunity to compare this solution with another possible one. In Chomsky and Halle 1968, a notation is proposed to express iterative or 'across the board' processes such as the application of «-umlaut to more than one vowel at a time. In that notation, we could write a modified form of the formulation in 13, avoiding the problem of disjunctive expansion of 13: 18.

a.

d/

(C0a)*C0u

This rule says that any number of a's immediately preceding an u are affected by «umlaut. The rule claims that an arbitrary number of a's can be affected, while the facts of the language are such that no more than two could ever appear in a form, but this is immaterial. Observe that this rule would have to be modified somewhat to account for the forms in 17: the term (C0a)* would have to be replaced with something like(C0

a

I)*, in order to prevent incorrect forms like *dlmdnokum, *dkornum,

*Jôpônum, *ôpôldum, etc. But this illustrates the unsatisfactory nature of rule 18. It is clearly not an accident that the syllables intervening between a vowel a which the rule

«-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

19

is to affect and the u which conditions it are limited to those containing an a which is subject to vowel reduction: this is precisely the class of syllables that will become u (by the operation of the umlaut and reduction rules). The formulation 18 completely misses this fact, and is thereby to be rejected. It has been argued elsewhere (Anderson forthcoming) that the device of ( )* frequently misses generalizations, and that there are formal problems in defining its interaction with other notational devices; it is proposed in the work cited that it be replaced by conventions, allowing rules to reapply to their own output in certain cases. The Icelandic «-umlaut case differs from most such iterative processes in that other rules (i.e. vowel reduction) can apply to the form between two applications of the umlaut rule, but there is also precedent for this (cf. the discussion of Turkish vowel harmony in Anderson forthcoming). We can conclude, therefore, that the proposed rule 18 is incorrect, on both language-particular and general theoretical grounds, and that the environment should be the simple one stated originally in rule 2. It may be noted that there are two forms in the language for which rule 18, rather than the iteratively applied rule 2, would appear to be correct: the two nouns kafald 'blizzard' and hafald '(weaving term)' have the plurals kofold and hofold. In the case of kafald, at least half of the standard dictionaries list its plural as the regular kafold instead; the word hafald is a rather rare one, not even found in many dictionaries. The analysis here must treat hofold and kofold (insofar as either appears at all) as complete exceptions, which is completely consistent with the feeling of native speakers that these are rather strange words. In any event, the number of forms like 17, which a theory espousing rule 18 would have to treat as exceptions, vastly outnumbers them. III. The structural change of the «-umlaut rule. Thus far, we have been assuming that the change carried out by the «-umlaut rule is a->d, as formulated in 2. Such a change, however, would be sufficiently isolated both in Icelandic and in the phonologies of other known languages to raise the question of whether, in fact, some more natural change is performed by the rule, with other rules of the language being responsible for the unusual surface form of the alternation. In looking for such an alternative, we can consider the content of the change from a to o: this involves a change in the three features of lowness, backness, and roundness. To see the background of the change a -> o, let us consider the vowel system of the language: 19.

a.

short vowels: [i] (=i/y) [e] ( = e )

[ii] (=«) [Ò] (=¿0 [a] ( = a ) [o] ( = 0 )

b.

diphthongs: [ij] ( = 0 [je] ( = é )

[uw] ( = « ) [ow] ( = 0 )

20

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

[ej] (=ei) [ow] (=au) [aj] ( = * ) [aw] (=d) It has been argued elsewhere (Anderson 1969) that the diphthongs [ej] and [ow] represent underlying diphthongs /ai/ and /au/, respectively, and that the diphthong [aj], which only appears in derived form as a result of the /-umlaut rule, should be represented as /ae/ at the point where it is produced. This /ae/ is, in turn, produced from underlying /a/ or /o/, and hence the surface diphthong [aj] can be eliminated as an independent element of the underlying vowel system. The remaining diphthongs can be derived by a rather natural rule if we assume that they represent tense simple vowels, with values equal to those of the nuclei of the diphthongs. This results in a vowel system (for the tense vowels) of much more natural and expected shape: 20.

I'll m

/u/ /6/

m diphthongs: /ai/

/au/

In the system of short vowels, things are apparently less orderly. We can eliminate the vowel o from underlying representations, deriving it from /a/ by the «-umlaut rule, but the rest of the system is seriously asymmetric. In Chomsky and Halle 1968, it is suggested that skew systems, such as the Icelandic short vowel system, generally are only surface phenomena, the reflexes of more natural underlying systems. These underlying systems are claimed to undergo phonological rules resulting in the superficially unnatural pattern. Such a claim is of course vacuous in isolation, but Chomsky and Halle further claim that it will in general be possible to find independent evidence for the existence of the needed rules to relate the natural underlying system to the surface form. This is an appreciably stronger assertion, and one that would considerably narrow the class of possible grammars countenanced by phonological theory if true. For Icelandic, the content of Chomsky and Halle's claim is that the five vowel system ought to be, in the underlying forms, like that of 21: 21.

/i/ /e/

/u/ /o/ N

In other words, the simple vowel system ought to be just like the system underlying the diphthongs (for which the claim is already borne out), with the two systems differentiated by some diacritic feature (here [ ± tense]). Some evidence for the correctness of this claim that the underlying long and short vowel systems are somehow isomorphic can be found in sporadic alternations between corresponding members of the two systems: 22.

a.

litill 'little (N. sg. masc.)'; litlir 'id., N.pl.masc.'

M-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

b. c. d. e.

21

eta 'to eat'; eta 'id., alternative form' ¡>ti 'you, sg.nom.'; -du 'id., enclitic form' godur 'good, N.sg.masc.'; gott 'id., N.sg.neut.' alin 'ell'; alnir 'id., pi.'

In addition, the claim that the phonetically front vowels o and u are back vowels at some stage is supported by the rule of VELAR FRONTING : this rule applies before front vowels in general (including the diphthong [aj], which it will be remembered is analyzed as front x at one point in its derivation), but (usually) not before o or u. It is thus plausible to claim that the surface vowel system 19 is simply the surface form of the vowel system 20-21. Now in deriving 19 from 20-21, one of the rules which will be needed is a rule to front underlying /u/ to [ii]: 23.

+high —tense +syll

[—back]

But observe that this change from back to front in rounded vowels is also part of the change from a to o. Assuming we had already performed the changes in lowness and rounding as part of w-umlaut, we could have rule 23 perform the change in backness simply by generalizing it to 24: 24.

—low —tense -> [—back] +syll

If we do this, we can eliminate the feature [—back] from the structural change of the «-umlaut rule. Another rule which will be required in the derivation of 19 from 20-21 is a rule to adjust the lowness of o : 25.

—tense —high +round —low

->• [+low]

Now observe that if we assume that «-umlaut simply makes the affected a [+round], this will give it the value of [o], which is the actual phonetic value of o. We could, however, simply generalize rule 25, making it a vowel shift rule for non-high rounded vowels: 26.

—tense —high +round alow

[—alow]

22

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON

This rule will simultaneously raise /o/ (=o) to /o/, and lower /o/ to its final phonetic value [o]. If we make this move, the feature specification [—low] can be removed from the change performed by the w-umlaut rule. Thus, much of the change from a to o is seen to be simply a generalization of other processes relating the underlying vowel system of Icelandic to its surface form. The resulting «-umlaut rule can be formulated as 27: 27.

IV. Evidence for the vowel shift rule. Of the two rules that are required in this analysis to affect the short back vowels (i.e. 24 and 26), one (24) is relatively uncontroversial. At least in the form 23, this is a generally recognized 'sound change' n Old Norse, and its Modern Icelandic reflex is natural enough. The vowel shift rule, however (26), is rather less known, and requires some justification. We know that at least in the middle of the twelfth century, at the time of the so-called 'first grammarian' (cf. Haugen 1950), no such rule applied, since o is clearly described as higher than Q (the ON form of o). Somehow, however, between that time and the present, o has been lowered and o raised (as well as fronted). These are the facts which are accounted for by assuming the addition to the grammar of rule 26. In fact, there is some evidence for the existence of rule 26 at a fairly early point in time. To see this, we must consider the interaction of rule 26 with various lengthening processes in Old Norse. There are three principal environments in which vowels were lengthened: (a) when stressed and word final; (b) before final or preconsonantal h; and (c) before clusters of /+[—coronal] consonant (back vowels only). The first of these is still a productive rule in the language (cf. sja, from /se+a/ by a stress shift rule, and final lengthening), while the other two are at most morpheme structure rules, but all three were productive in Old Norse. These rules antedate the appearance of the vowel shift rule, and accordingly apply before it in nearly all forms. Such an ordering, however, is a marked one in the sense of Kiparsky (1968) and Anderson (forthcoming), since the lengthening rules bleed the vowel shift rule by tensing some lax back vowels to which it could apply. In some forms, we suggest, this marked ordering was relaxed, and the vowel shift was allowed to apply before lengthening. We would expect lengthened g to appear as p (whose modern reflex is a), while lengthened o would appear as modern o. If vowel shift applied before lengthening in some forms however, we should find some instances of a where we would expect o, and vice versa. If such forms exist without other adequate explanation, therefore, they constitute evidence for the appearance of the vowel shift rule (26) before the effects of the lengthening processes were fossilized by incorporation in the lexical representations of the affected forms. There are several words which have modern 6 instead of a theoretically expected a. Some of these have adequate explanations: for instance, nasalized Q regularly shows

«-UMLAUT AND BREAKING IN A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

23

up as o, as in the name 6ttarr (from *^htuhariR) and several other words. Nasalization in Old Norse, however, was generally due to the influence of a following nasal (perhaps lost with compensatory lengthening) and not a preceding one, the usual situation in nasalization. The invocation of "ein benachbarter Nasal", then, in grammars such as Heusler (1964) to explain nott (from *nahtu, cf. Go. nahts) seems illegitimate. A preceding nasal did not, in general affect long g; cf. nal 'needle' O N ngl, from *nalu. Similarly, the word for 'river', Modern Icelandic a, was O N g usually, but appears occasionally as o. The original form of this word was *ahwu; here there is surely no nasal to invoke to explain the appearance of lengthened q as o. Similarly, in klo, from *klawa 'claw', cf. OE clawu, there is no nasal. The possibility of a source for o such as that suggested here also clarifies the history of the suffix -ott in the nominal type gmbdtt 'maidservant', discussed by Johannisson (1948) and Sturtevant (1953). There is a homophonous adjectival suffix, exemplified in forms such as skgllottr 'bald', which comes from Gmc. *uht. This suffix, of course, produces «-umlaut in the stem: cf. skalli, 'bald head'. The suffix -ott in Qmbott has a different origin, however: the word is a borrowing of Gallo-Latin ambactus, perhaps through Gothic or WGmc dialects (according to Sturtevant, 1953). The basic form of this suffix, then, is *ahtu. This form undergoes «-umlaut to *