The Root Vocalism of two Subclasses of Old Icelandic Class VII Strong Verbs

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M.A. Thesis at Háskóli Íslands - University of Iceland

Transcript

Hugviacutesindasvieth

The Root Vocalism of the Preterite of two Subclasses of Old

Icelandic VII Class Strong Verbs

Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

Diego Ferioli

Maiacute 2010

Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands

Hugviacutesindasvieth

Medieval Icelandic Studies

The Root Vocalism of the Preterite of two Subclasses of Old

Icelandic VII Class Strong Verbs

Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

Diego Ferioli

Kt 1510853269

Leiethbeinandi Haraldur Bernharethsson

Maiacute 2010

Abstract

The goal of this study is to discuss the controversial evolution of class VII

strong preterites in Old Norse which retained traces of the old Proto-Indo-

European and Proto-Germanic reduplicated perfect In particular the focus

will lay on two subgroups of class VII strong verbs in Old Icelandic which

from the 14th century onwards start being written with a diphthong ltiegt in

the preterite root as if from a long vowel (eg hielt fiekk and snieri rieri)

Orthographic evidence from the earliest Old Icelandic manuscripts is then

collected leading to the conclusion that the root vowel in the analysed

preterites forms was clearly a short monophthong (e) in early Old

Icelandic

In light of a review of the theories about the etymology of the preterites of

class VII strong verbs it is then proposed that the root vowel in the

preterites of the mentioned subclasses was short since Proto-Germanic

times and that it arose from the formerly reduplicated syllable after a shift

of the accentuation from the elided root to the reduplicating syllable The

diphthongisation is then traced back to multiple causes A first

phonological diphthongisation took place in words with word-initial h

affecting class VII preterites too (helt hekk) This initial diphthongisation

caused the spreading of the diphthong [je] from other VII class strong

preterites (heacutet greacutet) which had diphthongised because of etymological long

vowel In the modern language preterite plural forms directly derived from

forms with a short vowel are still observable as they show a different kind

of diphthongisation to [ei] (fengum gengum) The preterites of the second

subclass (snera rera etc) adopt the diphthong much later perhaps as late as

the 18th century as a result of their reanalysis as weak verbs and the

neutralisation of the opposition of quantity in the present stem

1

Table of Contents

1 Introduction hellip 4

2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System hellip 7

3 On Reduplication hellip 11

4 Views on the Rise of VII Class Strong Preterites hellip hellip 17

5 On ē2 and the Spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic helliphellip 21

6 The Orthography of the Earliest Manuscripts hellip 27

61 Introduction hellip 27

62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981) hellip 31

63 Holm perg 15 4to hellip 33

64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955) hellip 36

65 NRA 52 hellip 38

66 GKS 2087 4to hellip 38

67 AM 519a 4deg hellip 40

68 AM 132 fol hellip 41

69 Summary hellip 43

7 Conclusions hellip 44

8 Bibliography hellip 48

2

List of Abbreviations

Go = Gothic

Icel = Icelandic

IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet

OE = Old English

OFris = Old Frisian

ON = Old Norse

OS = Old Saxon

OHG = Old High German

PIE = Proto-Indo-European

3

Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

First Grammatical Treatise 8616

1 Introduction

The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

(the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

the preterite

Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

4

forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

Subclass Vowel Alternation

Infinitive English Translation

3p pret sg 3p pret pl

VII a ei - ē heita be called command

heacutet heacutetu

leika play leacutek leacuteku

VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

auka add joacutek

ausa pour joacutes josu

houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

falla fall fell fellu

falda fold felt feldu

blanda blend blett blendu

ganga walk gekk gengu

hanga hang hekk hengu

faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

5

Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

6

historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

are to be made

2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

(VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

Front Back Front Back

High i u ī ū eu [ju]

Mid e ē2 ai

Low a ē1 ō au

7

Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

front back front back front back

High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

front back front back

High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

8

to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

9

Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

(including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

point on lost any bimoric manifestation

Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

front back front back

High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

10

Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

syllablerdquo

3 On Reduplication

Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

history of the Germanic languages

The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

11

(s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

Germanic

blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

12

lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

now summarised as follows

a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

13

b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

and consequently

c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

according to the VIIb alternation)

The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

14

a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

CeiC

b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

assimilated

c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

and Old Frisian

An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

15

type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

system although a short vowel seems to dominate

Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

16

1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

preterites will be examined more specifically

4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

17

syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

(present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

18

However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

19

Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

(1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

syllable however

20

5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

vowel in Germanic

According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

21

inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

(199134)

According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

wit the present stem)

bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

lē2t-

bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

22

Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

strong verbs

The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

23

change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

(Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

(quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

24

exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

lengthening (1980118)

Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

25

phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

study that

a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

1972139)

which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

language well into the modern language

Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

26

liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

stems was likewise neutralised

6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

61 Introduction

As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

27

which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

glance

The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

(1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

28

length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

29

more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

harder (which does only rarely occur)

In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

(GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

30

author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

Grg)

31

Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

(8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

heacutet heacutett

het

3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

fexkfecc fecc

FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

(2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

gek geck gek

HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

her (44) her (38) heacuter

her (2) her

her (3) her (16)

her (3) her (2) heacuter

her her (3)

In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

32

instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

15 4to see below)

63 Holm perg 15 4to

One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

time span between the writing of its single parts

Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

33

up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

34

kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

[snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

with some instances of derounding to e

bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

reported 44 see table above)

bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

far the instances where it is absent

bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

35

Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

Weenen (2000)

Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

helt heck (3) hek

ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

(1955) contains the following manuscripts

bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

III)

bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

36

Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

ecc (3)

FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

hellthelt

HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

ſnere ſneɼe

VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

heacutet hett het (2) hett

ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

her (25) heacuter haeligr

her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

37

richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

65 NRA 52

Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

89)

[NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

towards a distinctively short vowel

66 GKS 2087 4to

The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

38

manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

according to Buergel (1904)

Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

Orthography N of Occurrences

VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

39

67 AM 519a 4deg

The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

accent mark to denote vowel length

40

68 AM 132 fol

The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

(AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

an their spelling discussed below)

Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

feacutekk fingu fenginn

(finginn)

falla fell fellu fallinn

feacutell feacutellu

ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

gingu (gingit)

halda helt heldu haldinn

heacutelt heacuteldu

Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

41

are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

(23819)

But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

[je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

nor accent mark

Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

42

the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

accent mark

69 Summary

To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

(1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

43

spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

language

7 Conclusions

As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

(sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

44

Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

of Old English and Old High German

Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

place

a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

etc)

b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

different processes

45

c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

subclass VIIc preterites)

d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

its preterite forms

e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

extended from their masculine and feminine forms

Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

[ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

[fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

46

got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

47

8 Bibliography

Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

48

Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

109159-178

Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

Hamburg

Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

2009

Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

Heidelberg

Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

history Word 15 282-312

49

Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

Press Oxford

Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

2333-47

Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

neacuteophilologique Helsinki

Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

50

Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

Leiden University Press Leiden

de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

Copenhagen

Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

studie Gleerup Lund

Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

Society of America Philadelphia

51

Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

University Press Oxford

Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

(Saale)

Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

Society of America Washington DC

Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

Ruprecht

Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

maatschappij Amsterdam

52

Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

Lingua 5289-123

53

  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

    Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands

    Hugviacutesindasvieth

    Medieval Icelandic Studies

    The Root Vocalism of the Preterite of two Subclasses of Old

    Icelandic VII Class Strong Verbs

    Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

    Diego Ferioli

    Kt 1510853269

    Leiethbeinandi Haraldur Bernharethsson

    Maiacute 2010

    Abstract

    The goal of this study is to discuss the controversial evolution of class VII

    strong preterites in Old Norse which retained traces of the old Proto-Indo-

    European and Proto-Germanic reduplicated perfect In particular the focus

    will lay on two subgroups of class VII strong verbs in Old Icelandic which

    from the 14th century onwards start being written with a diphthong ltiegt in

    the preterite root as if from a long vowel (eg hielt fiekk and snieri rieri)

    Orthographic evidence from the earliest Old Icelandic manuscripts is then

    collected leading to the conclusion that the root vowel in the analysed

    preterites forms was clearly a short monophthong (e) in early Old

    Icelandic

    In light of a review of the theories about the etymology of the preterites of

    class VII strong verbs it is then proposed that the root vowel in the

    preterites of the mentioned subclasses was short since Proto-Germanic

    times and that it arose from the formerly reduplicated syllable after a shift

    of the accentuation from the elided root to the reduplicating syllable The

    diphthongisation is then traced back to multiple causes A first

    phonological diphthongisation took place in words with word-initial h

    affecting class VII preterites too (helt hekk) This initial diphthongisation

    caused the spreading of the diphthong [je] from other VII class strong

    preterites (heacutet greacutet) which had diphthongised because of etymological long

    vowel In the modern language preterite plural forms directly derived from

    forms with a short vowel are still observable as they show a different kind

    of diphthongisation to [ei] (fengum gengum) The preterites of the second

    subclass (snera rera etc) adopt the diphthong much later perhaps as late as

    the 18th century as a result of their reanalysis as weak verbs and the

    neutralisation of the opposition of quantity in the present stem

    1

    Table of Contents

    1 Introduction hellip 4

    2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System hellip 7

    3 On Reduplication hellip 11

    4 Views on the Rise of VII Class Strong Preterites hellip hellip 17

    5 On ē2 and the Spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic helliphellip 21

    6 The Orthography of the Earliest Manuscripts hellip 27

    61 Introduction hellip 27

    62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981) hellip 31

    63 Holm perg 15 4to hellip 33

    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955) hellip 36

    65 NRA 52 hellip 38

    66 GKS 2087 4to hellip 38

    67 AM 519a 4deg hellip 40

    68 AM 132 fol hellip 41

    69 Summary hellip 43

    7 Conclusions hellip 44

    8 Bibliography hellip 48

    2

    List of Abbreviations

    Go = Gothic

    Icel = Icelandic

    IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet

    OE = Old English

    OFris = Old Frisian

    ON = Old Norse

    OS = Old Saxon

    OHG = Old High German

    PIE = Proto-Indo-European

    3

    Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

    First Grammatical Treatise 8616

    1 Introduction

    The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

    Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

    Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

    attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

    (the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

    phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

    preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

    alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

    ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

    contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

    attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

    Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

    Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

    reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

    the preterite

    Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

    reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

    part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

    show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

    difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

    1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

    4

    forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

    following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

    presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

    1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

    the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

    Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

    Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

    Subclass Vowel Alternation

    Infinitive English Translation

    3p pret sg 3p pret pl

    VII a ei - ē heita be called command

    heacutet heacutetu

    leika play leacutek leacuteku

    VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

    auka add joacutek

    ausa pour joacutes josu

    houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

    ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

    VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

    falla fall fell fellu

    falda fold felt feldu

    blanda blend blett blendu

    ganga walk gekk gengu

    hanga hang hekk hengu

    faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

    VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

    blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

    graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

    laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

    VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

    VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

    gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

    ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

    groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

    ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

    5

    Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

    and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

    into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

    only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

    From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

    forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

    VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

    will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

    14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

    the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

    surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

    vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

    in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

    pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

    diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

    constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

    of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

    As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

    Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

    divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

    early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

    Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

    mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

    Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

    interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

    obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

    tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

    6

    historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

    are to be made

    2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

    Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

    pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

    (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

    originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

    Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

    heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

    vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

    the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

    the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

    Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

    SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

    Front Back Front Back

    High i u ī ū eu [ju]

    Mid e ē2 ai

    Low a ē1 ō au

    7

    Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

    SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

    front back front back front back

    High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

    Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

    Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

    Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

    SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

    front back front back

    High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

    Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

    Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

    Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

    vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

    and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

    were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

    several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

    eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

    of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

    merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

    the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

    low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

    2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

    8

    to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

    Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

    been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

    rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

    central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

    of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

    Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

    the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

    2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

    languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

    diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

    for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

    The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

    new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

    rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

    former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

    front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

    while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

    As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

    to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

    meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

    3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

    4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

    9

    Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

    glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

    was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

    the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

    proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

    the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

    constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

    former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

    separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

    (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

    point on lost any bimoric manifestation

    Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

    UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

    front back front back

    High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

    Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

    Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

    Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

    considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

    by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

    changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

    that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

    always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

    written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

    data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

    length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

    century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

    10

    Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

    quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

    segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

    syllablerdquo

    3 On Reduplication

    Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

    to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

    expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

    characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

    special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

    accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

    European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

    further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

    once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

    there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

    relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

    morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

    history of the Germanic languages

    The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

    and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

    alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

    stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

    that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

    accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

    voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

    instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

    11

    (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

    gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

    number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

    subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

    example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

    alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

    Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

    The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

    Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

    clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

    fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

    it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

    does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

    from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

    Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

    are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

    expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

    While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

    contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

    simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

    were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

    as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

    retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

    Germanic

    blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

    12

    lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

    Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

    are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

    probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

    kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

    considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

    within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

    unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

    subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

    short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

    former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

    as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

    root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

    Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

    reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

    The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

    now summarised as follows

    a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

    preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

    5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

    13

    b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

    and consequently

    c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

    the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

    d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

    of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

    vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

    migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

    e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

    which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

    but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

    easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

    f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

    languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

    subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

    bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

    according to the VIIb alternation)

    The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

    reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

    long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

    even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

    often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

    subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

    subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

    after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

    they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

    has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

    structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

    14

    a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

    CeiC

    b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

    resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

    assimilated

    c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

    vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

    e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

    Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

    and Old Frisian

    An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

    Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

    Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

    Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

    ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

    held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

    felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

    fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

    hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

    gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

    fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

    Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

    later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

    problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

    that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

    As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

    15

    type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

    the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

    productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

    High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

    in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

    VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

    39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

    Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

    Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

    to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

    diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

    definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

    Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

    system although a short vowel seems to dominate

    Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

    option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

    diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

    VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

    Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

    Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

    Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

    fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

    is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

    starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

    ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

    Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

    be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

    Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

    16

    1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

    been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

    of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

    no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

    order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

    way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

    preterites will be examined more specifically

    4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

    Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

    times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

    of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

    following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

    a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

    b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

    Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

    and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

    root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

    analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

    vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

    lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

    vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

    diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

    whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

    17

    syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

    underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

    Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

    a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

    verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

    common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

    lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

    door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

    An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

    phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

    Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

    especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

    is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

    in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

    developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

    (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

    originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

    later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

    by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

    in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

    ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

    alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

    Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

    a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

    especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

    preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

    18

    However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

    phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

    reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

    Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

    vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

    agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

    those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

    infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

    Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

    formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

    Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

    Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

    having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

    produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

    new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

    as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

    ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

    developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

    actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

    that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

    discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

    Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

    North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

    diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

    gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

    the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

    from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

    19

    Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

    (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

    reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

    generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

    syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

    opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

    lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

    subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

    that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

    syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

    Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

    notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

    ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

    established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

    that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

    and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

    that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

    restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

    Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

    ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

    monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

    plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

    alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

    noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

    place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

    syllable however

    20

    5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

    Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

    Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

    short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

    ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

    ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

    quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

    noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

    that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

    the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

    P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

    and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

    borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

    substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

    vowel in Germanic

    According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

    distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

    derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

    instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

    to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

    assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

    is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

    loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

    innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

    The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

    does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

    21

    inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

    own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

    Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

    (199134)

    According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

    present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

    some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

    however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

    when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

    occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

    possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

    Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

    This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

    in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

    time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

    VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

    sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

    preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

    span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

    known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

    changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

    bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

    elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

    wit the present stem)

    bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

    lē2t-

    bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

    22

    Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

    But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

    elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

    the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

    Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

    Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

    retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

    elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

    amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

    lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

    haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

    tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

    time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

    been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

    no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

    being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

    The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

    an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

    that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

    discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

    recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

    particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

    of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

    cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

    Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

    strong verbs

    The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

    such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

    23

    change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

    Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

    instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

    been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

    subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

    orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

    Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

    j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

    very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

    class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

    only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

    result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

    such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

    e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

    Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

    (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

    particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

    (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

    long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

    is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

    regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

    generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

    occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

    frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

    Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

    Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

    hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

    adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

    24

    exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

    of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

    fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

    must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

    minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

    masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

    1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

    shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

    short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

    vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

    substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

    lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

    metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

    syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

    lengthening (1980118)

    Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

    neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

    affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

    lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

    apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

    vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

    Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

    the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

    be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

    to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

    archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

    phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

    possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

    25

    phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

    correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

    observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

    study that

    a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

    order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

    with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

    way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

    1972139)

    which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

    situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

    required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

    vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

    ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

    was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

    manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

    large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

    period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

    language well into the modern language

    Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

    trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

    verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

    that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

    analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

    ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

    prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

    how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

    26

    liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

    eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

    obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

    little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

    the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

    that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

    stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

    correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

    infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

    from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

    is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

    noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

    roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

    root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

    stems was likewise neutralised

    6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

    61 Introduction

    As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

    the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

    in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

    Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

    the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

    diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

    Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

    containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

    27

    which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

    Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

    here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

    contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

    glance

    The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

    earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

    is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

    has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

    phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

    considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

    gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

    mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

    marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

    a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

    ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

    evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

    vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

    are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

    to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

    monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

    vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

    in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

    In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

    mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

    scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

    (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

    28

    length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

    2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

    practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

    stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

    similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

    Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

    the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

    potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

    The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

    the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

    scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

    until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

    made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

    Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

    longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

    Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

    solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

    separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

    were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

    make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

    vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

    the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

    parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

    of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

    sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

    just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

    The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

    that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

    29

    more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

    manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

    because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

    for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

    testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

    small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

    written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

    its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

    like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

    widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

    practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

    harder (which does only rarely occur)

    In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

    Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

    century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

    has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

    (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

    the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

    used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

    systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

    non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

    extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

    It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

    graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

    Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

    and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

    encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

    etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

    30

    author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

    cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

    62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

    Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

    in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

    occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

    subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

    For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

    commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

    number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

    desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

    including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

    GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

    abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

    4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

    Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

    Grg)

    31

    Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

    237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

    VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

    (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

    heacutet heacutett

    het

    3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

    VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

    fexkfecc fecc

    FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

    GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

    gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

    (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

    gek geck gek

    HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

    heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

    HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

    VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

    SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

    ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

    3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

    Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

    her (44) her (38) heacuter

    her (2) her

    her (3) her (16)

    her (3) her (2) heacuter

    her her (3)

    In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

    once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

    other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

    person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

    overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

    between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

    6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

    32

    instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

    ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

    accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

    VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

    only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

    15 4to see below)

    63 Holm perg 15 4to

    One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

    so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

    about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

    extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

    scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

    orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

    that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

    20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

    hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

    been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

    scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

    popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

    Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

    but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

    several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

    the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

    time span between the writing of its single parts

    Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

    mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

    33

    up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

    called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

    manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

    According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

    placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

    of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

    Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

    and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

    times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

    more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

    lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

    of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

    The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

    Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

    others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

    orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

    Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

    a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

    either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

    b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

    lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

    c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

    In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

    lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

    derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

    of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

    historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

    34

    kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

    development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

    [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

    always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

    manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

    Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

    spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

    would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

    bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

    with some instances of derounding to e

    bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

    lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

    reported 44 see table above)

    bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

    far the instances where it is absent

    bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

    diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

    35

    Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

    divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

    Weenen (2000)

    Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

    a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

    feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

    helt heck (3) hek

    ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

    d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

    62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

    g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

    97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

    heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

    A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

    manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

    (1955) contains the following manuscripts

    bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

    III)

    bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

    bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

    bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

    36

    Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

    Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

    VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

    ecc (3)

    FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

    GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

    gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

    HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

    hellthelt

    HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

    VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

    SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

    ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

    ſnere ſneɼe

    VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

    heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

    heacutet hett het (2) hett

    ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

    her (25) heacuter haeligr

    her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

    Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

    ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

    possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

    does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

    preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

    With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

    against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

    given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

    time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

    AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

    received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

    37

    richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

    when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

    65 NRA 52

    Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

    the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

    and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

    how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

    very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

    length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

    89)

    [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

    vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

    akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

    percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

    In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

    are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

    preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

    forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

    towards a distinctively short vowel

    66 GKS 2087 4to

    The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

    precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

    38

    manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

    one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

    continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

    the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

    short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

    class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

    Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

    according to Buergel (1904)

    Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

    Orthography N of Occurrences

    VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

    VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

    VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

    HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

    FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

    GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

    VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

    RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

    VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

    Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

    correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

    no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

    39

    67 AM 519a 4deg

    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

    accent mark to denote vowel length

    40

    68 AM 132 fol

    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

    an their spelling discussed below)

    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

    feacutekk fingu fenginn

    (finginn)

    falla fell fellu fallinn

    feacutell feacutellu

    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

    gingu (gingit)

    halda helt heldu haldinn

    heacutelt heacuteldu

    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

    41

    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

    (23819)

    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

    nor accent mark

    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

    42

    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

    accent mark

    69 Summary

    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

    43

    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

    language

    7 Conclusions

    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

    44

    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

    of Old English and Old High German

    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

    place

    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

    etc)

    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

    different processes

    45

    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

    subclass VIIc preterites)

    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

    its preterite forms

    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

    46

    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

    47

    8 Bibliography

    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

    48

    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

    109159-178

    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

    Hamburg

    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

    2009

    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

    Heidelberg

    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

    history Word 15 282-312

    49

    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

    Press Oxford

    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

    2333-47

    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

    50

    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

    Leiden University Press Leiden

    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

    Copenhagen

    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

    studie Gleerup Lund

    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

    Society of America Philadelphia

    51

    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

    University Press Oxford

    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

    (Saale)

    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

    Society of America Washington DC

    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

    Ruprecht

    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

    maatschappij Amsterdam

    52

    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

    Lingua 5289-123

    53

    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

      Abstract

      The goal of this study is to discuss the controversial evolution of class VII

      strong preterites in Old Norse which retained traces of the old Proto-Indo-

      European and Proto-Germanic reduplicated perfect In particular the focus

      will lay on two subgroups of class VII strong verbs in Old Icelandic which

      from the 14th century onwards start being written with a diphthong ltiegt in

      the preterite root as if from a long vowel (eg hielt fiekk and snieri rieri)

      Orthographic evidence from the earliest Old Icelandic manuscripts is then

      collected leading to the conclusion that the root vowel in the analysed

      preterites forms was clearly a short monophthong (e) in early Old

      Icelandic

      In light of a review of the theories about the etymology of the preterites of

      class VII strong verbs it is then proposed that the root vowel in the

      preterites of the mentioned subclasses was short since Proto-Germanic

      times and that it arose from the formerly reduplicated syllable after a shift

      of the accentuation from the elided root to the reduplicating syllable The

      diphthongisation is then traced back to multiple causes A first

      phonological diphthongisation took place in words with word-initial h

      affecting class VII preterites too (helt hekk) This initial diphthongisation

      caused the spreading of the diphthong [je] from other VII class strong

      preterites (heacutet greacutet) which had diphthongised because of etymological long

      vowel In the modern language preterite plural forms directly derived from

      forms with a short vowel are still observable as they show a different kind

      of diphthongisation to [ei] (fengum gengum) The preterites of the second

      subclass (snera rera etc) adopt the diphthong much later perhaps as late as

      the 18th century as a result of their reanalysis as weak verbs and the

      neutralisation of the opposition of quantity in the present stem

      1

      Table of Contents

      1 Introduction hellip 4

      2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System hellip 7

      3 On Reduplication hellip 11

      4 Views on the Rise of VII Class Strong Preterites hellip hellip 17

      5 On ē2 and the Spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic helliphellip 21

      6 The Orthography of the Earliest Manuscripts hellip 27

      61 Introduction hellip 27

      62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981) hellip 31

      63 Holm perg 15 4to hellip 33

      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955) hellip 36

      65 NRA 52 hellip 38

      66 GKS 2087 4to hellip 38

      67 AM 519a 4deg hellip 40

      68 AM 132 fol hellip 41

      69 Summary hellip 43

      7 Conclusions hellip 44

      8 Bibliography hellip 48

      2

      List of Abbreviations

      Go = Gothic

      Icel = Icelandic

      IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet

      OE = Old English

      OFris = Old Frisian

      ON = Old Norse

      OS = Old Saxon

      OHG = Old High German

      PIE = Proto-Indo-European

      3

      Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

      First Grammatical Treatise 8616

      1 Introduction

      The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

      Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

      Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

      attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

      (the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

      phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

      preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

      alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

      ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

      contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

      attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

      Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

      Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

      reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

      the preterite

      Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

      reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

      part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

      show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

      difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

      1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

      4

      forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

      following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

      presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

      1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

      the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

      Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

      Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

      Subclass Vowel Alternation

      Infinitive English Translation

      3p pret sg 3p pret pl

      VII a ei - ē heita be called command

      heacutet heacutetu

      leika play leacutek leacuteku

      VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

      auka add joacutek

      ausa pour joacutes josu

      houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

      ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

      VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

      falla fall fell fellu

      falda fold felt feldu

      blanda blend blett blendu

      ganga walk gekk gengu

      hanga hang hekk hengu

      faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

      VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

      blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

      graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

      laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

      VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

      VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

      gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

      ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

      groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

      ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

      5

      Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

      and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

      into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

      only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

      From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

      forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

      VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

      will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

      14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

      the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

      surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

      vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

      in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

      pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

      diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

      constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

      of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

      As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

      Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

      divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

      early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

      Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

      mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

      Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

      interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

      obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

      tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

      6

      historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

      are to be made

      2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

      Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

      pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

      (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

      originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

      Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

      heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

      vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

      the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

      the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

      Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

      SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

      Front Back Front Back

      High i u ī ū eu [ju]

      Mid e ē2 ai

      Low a ē1 ō au

      7

      Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

      SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

      front back front back front back

      High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

      Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

      Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

      Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

      SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

      front back front back

      High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

      Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

      Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

      Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

      vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

      and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

      were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

      several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

      eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

      of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

      merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

      the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

      low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

      2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

      8

      to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

      Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

      been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

      rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

      central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

      of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

      Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

      the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

      2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

      languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

      diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

      for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

      The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

      new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

      rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

      former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

      front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

      while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

      As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

      to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

      meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

      3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

      4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

      9

      Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

      glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

      was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

      the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

      proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

      the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

      constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

      former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

      separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

      (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

      point on lost any bimoric manifestation

      Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

      UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

      front back front back

      High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

      Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

      Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

      Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

      considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

      by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

      changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

      that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

      always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

      written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

      data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

      length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

      century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

      10

      Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

      quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

      segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

      syllablerdquo

      3 On Reduplication

      Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

      to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

      expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

      characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

      special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

      accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

      European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

      further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

      once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

      there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

      relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

      morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

      history of the Germanic languages

      The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

      and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

      alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

      stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

      that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

      accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

      voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

      instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

      11

      (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

      gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

      number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

      subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

      example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

      alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

      Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

      The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

      Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

      clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

      fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

      it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

      does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

      from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

      Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

      are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

      expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

      While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

      contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

      simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

      were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

      as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

      retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

      Germanic

      blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

      12

      lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

      Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

      are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

      probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

      kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

      considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

      within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

      unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

      subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

      short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

      former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

      as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

      root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

      Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

      reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

      The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

      now summarised as follows

      a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

      preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

      5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

      13

      b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

      and consequently

      c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

      the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

      d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

      of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

      vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

      migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

      e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

      which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

      but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

      easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

      f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

      languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

      subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

      bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

      according to the VIIb alternation)

      The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

      reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

      long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

      even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

      often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

      subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

      subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

      after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

      they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

      has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

      structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

      14

      a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

      CeiC

      b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

      resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

      assimilated

      c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

      vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

      e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

      Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

      and Old Frisian

      An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

      Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

      Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

      Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

      ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

      held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

      felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

      fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

      hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

      gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

      fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

      Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

      later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

      problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

      that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

      As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

      15

      type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

      the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

      productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

      High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

      in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

      VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

      39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

      Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

      Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

      to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

      diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

      definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

      Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

      system although a short vowel seems to dominate

      Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

      option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

      diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

      VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

      Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

      Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

      Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

      fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

      is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

      starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

      ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

      Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

      be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

      Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

      16

      1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

      been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

      of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

      no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

      order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

      way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

      preterites will be examined more specifically

      4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

      Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

      times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

      of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

      following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

      a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

      b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

      Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

      and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

      root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

      analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

      vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

      lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

      vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

      diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

      whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

      17

      syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

      underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

      Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

      a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

      verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

      common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

      lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

      door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

      An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

      phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

      Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

      especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

      is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

      in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

      developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

      (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

      originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

      later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

      by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

      in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

      ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

      alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

      Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

      a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

      especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

      preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

      18

      However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

      phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

      reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

      Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

      vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

      agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

      those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

      infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

      Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

      formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

      Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

      Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

      having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

      produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

      new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

      as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

      ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

      developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

      actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

      that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

      discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

      Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

      North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

      diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

      gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

      the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

      from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

      19

      Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

      (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

      reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

      generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

      syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

      opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

      lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

      subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

      that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

      syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

      Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

      notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

      ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

      established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

      that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

      and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

      that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

      restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

      Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

      ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

      monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

      plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

      alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

      noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

      place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

      syllable however

      20

      5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

      Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

      Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

      short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

      ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

      ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

      quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

      noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

      that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

      the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

      P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

      and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

      borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

      substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

      vowel in Germanic

      According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

      distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

      derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

      instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

      to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

      assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

      is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

      loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

      innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

      The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

      does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

      21

      inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

      own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

      Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

      (199134)

      According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

      present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

      some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

      however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

      when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

      occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

      possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

      Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

      This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

      in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

      time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

      VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

      sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

      preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

      span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

      known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

      changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

      bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

      elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

      wit the present stem)

      bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

      lē2t-

      bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

      22

      Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

      But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

      elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

      the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

      Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

      Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

      retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

      elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

      amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

      lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

      haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

      tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

      time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

      been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

      no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

      being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

      The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

      an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

      that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

      discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

      recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

      particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

      of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

      cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

      Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

      strong verbs

      The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

      such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

      23

      change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

      Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

      instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

      been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

      subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

      orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

      Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

      j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

      very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

      class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

      only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

      result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

      such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

      e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

      Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

      (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

      particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

      (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

      long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

      is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

      regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

      generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

      occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

      frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

      Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

      Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

      hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

      adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

      24

      exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

      of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

      fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

      must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

      minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

      masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

      1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

      shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

      short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

      vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

      substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

      lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

      metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

      syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

      lengthening (1980118)

      Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

      neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

      affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

      lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

      apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

      vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

      Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

      the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

      be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

      to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

      archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

      phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

      possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

      25

      phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

      correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

      observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

      study that

      a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

      order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

      with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

      way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

      1972139)

      which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

      situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

      required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

      vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

      ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

      was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

      manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

      large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

      period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

      language well into the modern language

      Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

      trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

      verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

      that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

      analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

      ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

      prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

      how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

      26

      liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

      eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

      obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

      little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

      the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

      that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

      stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

      correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

      infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

      from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

      is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

      noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

      roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

      root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

      stems was likewise neutralised

      6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

      61 Introduction

      As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

      the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

      in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

      Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

      the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

      diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

      Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

      containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

      27

      which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

      Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

      here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

      contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

      glance

      The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

      earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

      is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

      has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

      phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

      considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

      gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

      mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

      marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

      a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

      ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

      evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

      vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

      are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

      to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

      monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

      vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

      in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

      In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

      mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

      scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

      (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

      28

      length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

      2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

      practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

      stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

      similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

      Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

      the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

      potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

      The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

      the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

      scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

      until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

      made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

      Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

      longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

      Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

      solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

      separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

      were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

      make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

      vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

      the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

      parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

      of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

      sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

      just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

      The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

      that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

      29

      more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

      manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

      because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

      for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

      testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

      small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

      written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

      its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

      like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

      widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

      practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

      harder (which does only rarely occur)

      In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

      Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

      century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

      has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

      (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

      the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

      used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

      systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

      non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

      extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

      It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

      graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

      Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

      and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

      encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

      etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

      30

      author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

      cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

      62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

      Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

      in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

      occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

      subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

      For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

      commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

      number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

      desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

      including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

      GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

      abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

      4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

      Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

      Grg)

      31

      Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

      237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

      VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

      (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

      heacutet heacutett

      het

      3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

      VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

      fexkfecc fecc

      FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

      GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

      gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

      (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

      gek geck gek

      HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

      heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

      HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

      VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

      SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

      ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

      3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

      Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

      her (44) her (38) heacuter

      her (2) her

      her (3) her (16)

      her (3) her (2) heacuter

      her her (3)

      In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

      once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

      other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

      person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

      overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

      between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

      6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

      32

      instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

      ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

      accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

      VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

      only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

      15 4to see below)

      63 Holm perg 15 4to

      One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

      so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

      about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

      extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

      scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

      orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

      that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

      20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

      hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

      been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

      scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

      popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

      Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

      but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

      several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

      the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

      time span between the writing of its single parts

      Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

      mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

      33

      up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

      called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

      manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

      According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

      placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

      of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

      Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

      and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

      times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

      more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

      lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

      of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

      The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

      Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

      others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

      orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

      Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

      a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

      either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

      b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

      lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

      c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

      In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

      lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

      derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

      of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

      historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

      34

      kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

      development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

      [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

      always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

      manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

      Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

      spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

      would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

      bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

      with some instances of derounding to e

      bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

      lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

      reported 44 see table above)

      bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

      far the instances where it is absent

      bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

      diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

      35

      Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

      divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

      Weenen (2000)

      Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

      a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

      feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

      helt heck (3) hek

      ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

      d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

      62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

      g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

      97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

      heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

      A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

      manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

      (1955) contains the following manuscripts

      bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

      III)

      bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

      bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

      bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

      36

      Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

      Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

      VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

      ecc (3)

      FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

      GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

      gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

      HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

      hellthelt

      HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

      VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

      SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

      ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

      ſnere ſneɼe

      VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

      heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

      heacutet hett het (2) hett

      ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

      her (25) heacuter haeligr

      her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

      Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

      ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

      possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

      does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

      preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

      With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

      against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

      given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

      time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

      AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

      received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

      37

      richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

      when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

      65 NRA 52

      Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

      the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

      and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

      how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

      very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

      length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

      89)

      [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

      vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

      akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

      percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

      In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

      are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

      preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

      forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

      towards a distinctively short vowel

      66 GKS 2087 4to

      The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

      precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

      38

      manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

      one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

      continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

      the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

      short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

      class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

      Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

      according to Buergel (1904)

      Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

      Orthography N of Occurrences

      VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

      VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

      VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

      HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

      FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

      GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

      VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

      RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

      VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

      Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

      correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

      no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

      39

      67 AM 519a 4deg

      The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

      the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

      Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

      parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

      Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

      which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

      language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

      Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

      Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

      clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

      by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

      spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

      century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

      The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

      appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

      Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

      attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

      instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

      ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

      for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

      79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

      4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

      times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

      accent mark to denote vowel length

      40

      68 AM 132 fol

      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

      an their spelling discussed below)

      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

      feacutekk fingu fenginn

      (finginn)

      falla fell fellu fallinn

      feacutell feacutellu

      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

      gingu (gingit)

      halda helt heldu haldinn

      heacutelt heacuteldu

      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

      41

      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

      (23819)

      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

      nor accent mark

      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

      42

      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

      accent mark

      69 Summary

      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

      43

      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

      language

      7 Conclusions

      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

      44

      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

      of Old English and Old High German

      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

      place

      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

      etc)

      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

      different processes

      45

      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

      subclass VIIc preterites)

      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

      its preterite forms

      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

      46

      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

      47

      8 Bibliography

      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

      48

      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

      109159-178

      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

      Hamburg

      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

      2009

      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

      Heidelberg

      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

      history Word 15 282-312

      49

      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

      Press Oxford

      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

      2333-47

      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

      50

      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

      Leiden University Press Leiden

      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

      Copenhagen

      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

      studie Gleerup Lund

      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

      Society of America Philadelphia

      51

      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

      University Press Oxford

      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

      (Saale)

      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

      Society of America Washington DC

      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

      Ruprecht

      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

      maatschappij Amsterdam

      52

      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

      Lingua 5289-123

      53

      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

        Table of Contents

        1 Introduction hellip 4

        2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System hellip 7

        3 On Reduplication hellip 11

        4 Views on the Rise of VII Class Strong Preterites hellip hellip 17

        5 On ē2 and the Spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic helliphellip 21

        6 The Orthography of the Earliest Manuscripts hellip 27

        61 Introduction hellip 27

        62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981) hellip 31

        63 Holm perg 15 4to hellip 33

        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955) hellip 36

        65 NRA 52 hellip 38

        66 GKS 2087 4to hellip 38

        67 AM 519a 4deg hellip 40

        68 AM 132 fol hellip 41

        69 Summary hellip 43

        7 Conclusions hellip 44

        8 Bibliography hellip 48

        2

        List of Abbreviations

        Go = Gothic

        Icel = Icelandic

        IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet

        OE = Old English

        OFris = Old Frisian

        ON = Old Norse

        OS = Old Saxon

        OHG = Old High German

        PIE = Proto-Indo-European

        3

        Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

        First Grammatical Treatise 8616

        1 Introduction

        The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

        Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

        Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

        attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

        (the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

        phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

        preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

        alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

        ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

        contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

        attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

        Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

        Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

        reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

        the preterite

        Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

        reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

        part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

        show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

        difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

        1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

        4

        forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

        following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

        presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

        1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

        the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

        Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

        Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

        Subclass Vowel Alternation

        Infinitive English Translation

        3p pret sg 3p pret pl

        VII a ei - ē heita be called command

        heacutet heacutetu

        leika play leacutek leacuteku

        VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

        auka add joacutek

        ausa pour joacutes josu

        houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

        ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

        VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

        falla fall fell fellu

        falda fold felt feldu

        blanda blend blett blendu

        ganga walk gekk gengu

        hanga hang hekk hengu

        faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

        VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

        blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

        graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

        laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

        VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

        VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

        gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

        ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

        groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

        ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

        5

        Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

        and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

        into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

        only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

        From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

        forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

        VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

        will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

        14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

        the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

        surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

        vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

        in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

        pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

        diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

        constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

        of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

        As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

        Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

        divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

        early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

        Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

        mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

        Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

        interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

        obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

        tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

        6

        historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

        are to be made

        2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

        Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

        pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

        (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

        originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

        Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

        heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

        vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

        the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

        the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

        Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

        SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

        Front Back Front Back

        High i u ī ū eu [ju]

        Mid e ē2 ai

        Low a ē1 ō au

        7

        Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

        SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

        front back front back front back

        High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

        Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

        Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

        Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

        SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

        front back front back

        High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

        Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

        Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

        Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

        vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

        and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

        were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

        several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

        eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

        of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

        merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

        the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

        low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

        2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

        8

        to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

        Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

        been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

        rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

        central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

        of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

        Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

        the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

        2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

        languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

        diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

        for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

        The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

        new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

        rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

        former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

        front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

        while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

        As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

        to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

        meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

        3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

        4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

        9

        Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

        glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

        was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

        the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

        proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

        the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

        constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

        former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

        separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

        (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

        point on lost any bimoric manifestation

        Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

        UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

        front back front back

        High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

        Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

        Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

        Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

        considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

        by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

        changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

        that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

        always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

        written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

        data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

        length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

        century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

        10

        Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

        quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

        segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

        syllablerdquo

        3 On Reduplication

        Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

        to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

        expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

        characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

        special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

        accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

        European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

        further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

        once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

        there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

        relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

        morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

        history of the Germanic languages

        The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

        and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

        alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

        stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

        that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

        accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

        voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

        instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

        11

        (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

        gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

        number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

        subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

        example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

        alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

        Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

        The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

        Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

        clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

        fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

        it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

        does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

        from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

        Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

        are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

        expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

        While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

        contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

        simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

        were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

        as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

        retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

        Germanic

        blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

        12

        lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

        Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

        are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

        probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

        kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

        considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

        within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

        unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

        subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

        short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

        former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

        as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

        root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

        Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

        reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

        The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

        now summarised as follows

        a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

        preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

        5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

        13

        b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

        and consequently

        c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

        the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

        d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

        of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

        vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

        migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

        e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

        which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

        but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

        easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

        f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

        languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

        subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

        bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

        according to the VIIb alternation)

        The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

        reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

        long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

        even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

        often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

        subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

        subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

        after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

        they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

        has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

        structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

        14

        a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

        CeiC

        b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

        resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

        assimilated

        c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

        vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

        e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

        Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

        and Old Frisian

        An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

        Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

        Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

        Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

        ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

        held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

        felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

        fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

        hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

        gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

        fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

        Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

        later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

        problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

        that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

        As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

        15

        type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

        the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

        productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

        High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

        in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

        VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

        39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

        Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

        Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

        to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

        diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

        definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

        Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

        system although a short vowel seems to dominate

        Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

        option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

        diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

        VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

        Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

        Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

        Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

        fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

        is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

        starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

        ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

        Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

        be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

        Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

        16

        1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

        been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

        of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

        no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

        order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

        way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

        preterites will be examined more specifically

        4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

        Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

        times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

        of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

        following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

        a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

        b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

        Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

        and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

        root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

        analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

        vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

        lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

        vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

        diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

        whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

        17

        syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

        underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

        Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

        a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

        verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

        common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

        lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

        door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

        An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

        phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

        Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

        especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

        is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

        in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

        developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

        (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

        originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

        later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

        by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

        in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

        ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

        alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

        Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

        a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

        especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

        preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

        18

        However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

        phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

        reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

        Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

        vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

        agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

        those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

        infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

        Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

        formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

        Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

        Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

        having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

        produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

        new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

        as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

        ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

        developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

        actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

        that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

        discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

        Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

        North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

        diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

        gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

        the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

        from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

        19

        Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

        (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

        reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

        generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

        syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

        opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

        lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

        subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

        that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

        syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

        Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

        notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

        ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

        established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

        that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

        and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

        that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

        restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

        Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

        ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

        monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

        plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

        alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

        noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

        place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

        syllable however

        20

        5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

        Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

        Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

        short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

        ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

        ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

        quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

        noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

        that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

        the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

        P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

        and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

        borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

        substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

        vowel in Germanic

        According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

        distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

        derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

        instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

        to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

        assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

        is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

        loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

        innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

        The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

        does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

        21

        inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

        own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

        Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

        (199134)

        According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

        present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

        some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

        however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

        when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

        occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

        possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

        Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

        This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

        in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

        time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

        VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

        sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

        preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

        span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

        known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

        changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

        bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

        elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

        wit the present stem)

        bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

        lē2t-

        bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

        22

        Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

        But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

        elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

        the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

        Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

        Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

        retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

        elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

        amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

        lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

        haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

        tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

        time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

        been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

        no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

        being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

        The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

        an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

        that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

        discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

        recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

        particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

        of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

        cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

        Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

        strong verbs

        The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

        such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

        23

        change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

        Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

        instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

        been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

        subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

        orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

        Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

        j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

        very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

        class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

        only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

        result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

        such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

        e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

        Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

        (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

        particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

        (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

        long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

        is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

        regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

        generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

        occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

        frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

        Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

        Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

        hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

        adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

        24

        exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

        of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

        fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

        must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

        minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

        masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

        1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

        shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

        short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

        vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

        substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

        lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

        metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

        syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

        lengthening (1980118)

        Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

        neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

        affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

        lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

        apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

        vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

        Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

        the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

        be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

        to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

        archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

        phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

        possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

        25

        phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

        correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

        observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

        study that

        a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

        order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

        with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

        way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

        1972139)

        which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

        situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

        required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

        vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

        ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

        was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

        manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

        large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

        period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

        language well into the modern language

        Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

        trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

        verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

        that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

        analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

        ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

        prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

        how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

        26

        liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

        eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

        obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

        little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

        the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

        that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

        stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

        correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

        infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

        from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

        is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

        noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

        roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

        root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

        stems was likewise neutralised

        6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

        61 Introduction

        As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

        the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

        in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

        Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

        the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

        diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

        Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

        containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

        27

        which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

        Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

        here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

        contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

        glance

        The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

        earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

        is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

        has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

        phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

        considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

        gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

        mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

        marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

        a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

        ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

        evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

        vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

        are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

        to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

        monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

        vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

        in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

        In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

        mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

        scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

        (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

        28

        length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

        2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

        practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

        stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

        similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

        Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

        the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

        potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

        The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

        the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

        scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

        until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

        made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

        Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

        longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

        Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

        solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

        separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

        were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

        make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

        vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

        the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

        parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

        of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

        sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

        just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

        The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

        that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

        29

        more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

        manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

        because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

        for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

        testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

        small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

        written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

        its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

        like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

        widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

        practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

        harder (which does only rarely occur)

        In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

        Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

        century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

        has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

        (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

        the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

        used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

        systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

        non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

        extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

        It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

        graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

        Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

        and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

        encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

        etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

        30

        author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

        cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

        62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

        Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

        in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

        occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

        subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

        For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

        commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

        number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

        desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

        including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

        GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

        abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

        4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

        Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

        Grg)

        31

        Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

        237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

        VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

        (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

        heacutet heacutett

        het

        3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

        VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

        fexkfecc fecc

        FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

        GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

        gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

        (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

        gek geck gek

        HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

        heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

        HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

        VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

        SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

        ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

        3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

        Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

        her (44) her (38) heacuter

        her (2) her

        her (3) her (16)

        her (3) her (2) heacuter

        her her (3)

        In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

        once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

        other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

        person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

        overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

        between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

        6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

        32

        instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

        ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

        accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

        VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

        only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

        15 4to see below)

        63 Holm perg 15 4to

        One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

        so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

        about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

        extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

        scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

        orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

        that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

        20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

        hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

        been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

        scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

        popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

        Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

        but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

        several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

        the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

        time span between the writing of its single parts

        Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

        mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

        33

        up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

        called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

        manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

        According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

        placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

        of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

        Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

        and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

        times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

        more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

        lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

        of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

        The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

        Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

        others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

        orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

        Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

        a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

        either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

        b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

        lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

        c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

        In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

        lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

        derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

        of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

        historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

        34

        kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

        development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

        [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

        always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

        manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

        Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

        spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

        would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

        bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

        with some instances of derounding to e

        bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

        lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

        reported 44 see table above)

        bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

        far the instances where it is absent

        bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

        diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

        35

        Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

        divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

        Weenen (2000)

        Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

        a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

        feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

        helt heck (3) hek

        ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

        d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

        62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

        g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

        97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

        heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

        A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

        manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

        (1955) contains the following manuscripts

        bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

        III)

        bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

        bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

        bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

        36

        Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

        Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

        VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

        ecc (3)

        FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

        GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

        gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

        HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

        hellthelt

        HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

        VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

        SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

        ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

        ſnere ſneɼe

        VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

        heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

        heacutet hett het (2) hett

        ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

        her (25) heacuter haeligr

        her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

        Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

        ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

        possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

        does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

        preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

        With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

        against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

        given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

        time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

        AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

        received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

        37

        richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

        when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

        65 NRA 52

        Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

        the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

        and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

        how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

        very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

        length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

        89)

        [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

        vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

        akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

        percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

        In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

        are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

        preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

        forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

        towards a distinctively short vowel

        66 GKS 2087 4to

        The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

        precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

        38

        manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

        one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

        continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

        the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

        short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

        class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

        Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

        according to Buergel (1904)

        Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

        Orthography N of Occurrences

        VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

        VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

        VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

        HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

        FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

        GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

        VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

        RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

        VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

        Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

        correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

        no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

        39

        67 AM 519a 4deg

        The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

        the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

        Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

        parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

        Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

        which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

        language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

        Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

        Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

        clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

        by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

        spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

        century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

        The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

        appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

        Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

        attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

        instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

        ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

        for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

        79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

        4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

        times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

        accent mark to denote vowel length

        40

        68 AM 132 fol

        The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

        (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

        included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

        as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

        seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

        Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

        and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

        that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

        secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

        an their spelling discussed below)

        Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

        faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

        feacutekk fingu fenginn

        (finginn)

        falla fell fellu fallinn

        feacutell feacutellu

        ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

        gingu (gingit)

        halda helt heldu haldinn

        heacutelt heacuteldu

        Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

        notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

        accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

        vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

        other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

        41

        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

        (23819)

        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

        nor accent mark

        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

        42

        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

        accent mark

        69 Summary

        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

        43

        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

        language

        7 Conclusions

        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

        44

        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

        of Old English and Old High German

        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

        place

        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

        etc)

        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

        different processes

        45

        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

        subclass VIIc preterites)

        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

        its preterite forms

        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

        46

        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

        47

        8 Bibliography

        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

        48

        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

        109159-178

        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

        Hamburg

        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

        2009

        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

        Heidelberg

        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

        history Word 15 282-312

        49

        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

        Press Oxford

        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

        2333-47

        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

        50

        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

        Leiden University Press Leiden

        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

        Copenhagen

        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

        studie Gleerup Lund

        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

        Society of America Philadelphia

        51

        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

        University Press Oxford

        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

        (Saale)

        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

        Society of America Washington DC

        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

        Ruprecht

        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

        maatschappij Amsterdam

        52

        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

        Lingua 5289-123

        53

        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

          List of Abbreviations

          Go = Gothic

          Icel = Icelandic

          IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet

          OE = Old English

          OFris = Old Frisian

          ON = Old Norse

          OS = Old Saxon

          OHG = Old High German

          PIE = Proto-Indo-European

          3

          Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

          First Grammatical Treatise 8616

          1 Introduction

          The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

          Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

          Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

          attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

          (the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

          phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

          preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

          alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

          ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

          contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

          attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

          Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

          Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

          reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

          the preterite

          Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

          reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

          part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

          show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

          difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

          1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

          4

          forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

          following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

          presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

          1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

          the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

          Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

          Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

          Subclass Vowel Alternation

          Infinitive English Translation

          3p pret sg 3p pret pl

          VII a ei - ē heita be called command

          heacutet heacutetu

          leika play leacutek leacuteku

          VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

          auka add joacutek

          ausa pour joacutes josu

          houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

          ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

          VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

          falla fall fell fellu

          falda fold felt feldu

          blanda blend blett blendu

          ganga walk gekk gengu

          hanga hang hekk hengu

          faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

          VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

          blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

          graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

          laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

          VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

          VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

          gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

          ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

          groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

          ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

          5

          Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

          and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

          into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

          only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

          From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

          forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

          VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

          will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

          14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

          the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

          surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

          vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

          in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

          pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

          diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

          constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

          of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

          As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

          Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

          divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

          early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

          Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

          mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

          Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

          interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

          obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

          tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

          6

          historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

          are to be made

          2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

          Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

          pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

          (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

          originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

          Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

          heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

          vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

          the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

          the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

          Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

          SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

          Front Back Front Back

          High i u ī ū eu [ju]

          Mid e ē2 ai

          Low a ē1 ō au

          7

          Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

          SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

          front back front back front back

          High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

          Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

          Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

          Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

          SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

          front back front back

          High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

          Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

          Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

          Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

          vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

          and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

          were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

          several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

          eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

          of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

          merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

          the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

          low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

          2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

          8

          to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

          Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

          been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

          rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

          central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

          of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

          Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

          the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

          2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

          languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

          diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

          for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

          The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

          new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

          rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

          former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

          front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

          while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

          As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

          to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

          meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

          3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

          4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

          9

          Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

          glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

          was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

          the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

          proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

          the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

          constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

          former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

          separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

          (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

          point on lost any bimoric manifestation

          Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

          UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

          front back front back

          High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

          Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

          Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

          Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

          considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

          by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

          changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

          that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

          always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

          written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

          data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

          length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

          century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

          10

          Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

          quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

          segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

          syllablerdquo

          3 On Reduplication

          Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

          to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

          expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

          characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

          special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

          accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

          European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

          further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

          once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

          there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

          relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

          morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

          history of the Germanic languages

          The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

          and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

          alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

          stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

          that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

          accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

          voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

          instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

          11

          (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

          gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

          number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

          subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

          example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

          alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

          Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

          The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

          Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

          clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

          fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

          it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

          does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

          from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

          Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

          are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

          expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

          While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

          contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

          simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

          were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

          as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

          retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

          Germanic

          blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

          12

          lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

          Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

          are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

          probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

          kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

          considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

          within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

          unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

          subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

          short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

          former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

          as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

          root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

          Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

          reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

          The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

          now summarised as follows

          a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

          preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

          5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

          13

          b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

          and consequently

          c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

          the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

          d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

          of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

          vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

          migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

          e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

          which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

          but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

          easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

          f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

          languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

          subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

          bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

          according to the VIIb alternation)

          The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

          reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

          long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

          even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

          often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

          subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

          subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

          after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

          they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

          has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

          structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

          14

          a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

          CeiC

          b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

          resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

          assimilated

          c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

          vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

          e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

          Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

          and Old Frisian

          An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

          Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

          Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

          Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

          ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

          held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

          felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

          fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

          hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

          gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

          fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

          Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

          later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

          problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

          that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

          As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

          15

          type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

          the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

          productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

          High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

          in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

          VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

          39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

          Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

          Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

          to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

          diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

          definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

          Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

          system although a short vowel seems to dominate

          Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

          option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

          diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

          VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

          Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

          Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

          Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

          fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

          is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

          starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

          ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

          Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

          be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

          Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

          16

          1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

          been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

          of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

          no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

          order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

          way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

          preterites will be examined more specifically

          4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

          Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

          times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

          of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

          following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

          a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

          b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

          Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

          and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

          root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

          analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

          vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

          lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

          vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

          diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

          whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

          17

          syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

          underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

          Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

          a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

          verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

          common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

          lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

          door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

          An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

          phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

          Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

          especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

          is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

          in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

          developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

          (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

          originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

          later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

          by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

          in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

          ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

          alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

          Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

          a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

          especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

          preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

          18

          However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

          phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

          reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

          Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

          vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

          agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

          those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

          infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

          Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

          formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

          Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

          Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

          having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

          produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

          new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

          as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

          ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

          developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

          actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

          that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

          discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

          Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

          North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

          diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

          gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

          the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

          from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

          19

          Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

          (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

          reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

          generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

          syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

          opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

          lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

          subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

          that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

          syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

          Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

          notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

          ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

          established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

          that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

          and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

          that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

          restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

          Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

          ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

          monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

          plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

          alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

          noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

          place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

          syllable however

          20

          5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

          Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

          Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

          short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

          ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

          ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

          quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

          noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

          that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

          the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

          P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

          and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

          borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

          substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

          vowel in Germanic

          According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

          distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

          derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

          instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

          to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

          assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

          is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

          loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

          innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

          The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

          does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

          21

          inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

          own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

          Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

          (199134)

          According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

          present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

          some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

          however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

          when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

          occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

          possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

          Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

          This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

          in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

          time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

          VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

          sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

          preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

          span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

          known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

          changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

          bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

          elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

          wit the present stem)

          bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

          lē2t-

          bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

          22

          Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

          But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

          elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

          the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

          Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

          Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

          retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

          elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

          amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

          lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

          haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

          tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

          time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

          been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

          no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

          being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

          The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

          an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

          that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

          discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

          recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

          particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

          of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

          cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

          Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

          strong verbs

          The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

          such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

          23

          change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

          Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

          instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

          been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

          subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

          orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

          Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

          j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

          very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

          class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

          only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

          result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

          such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

          e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

          Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

          (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

          particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

          (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

          long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

          is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

          regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

          generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

          occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

          frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

          Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

          Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

          hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

          adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

          24

          exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

          of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

          fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

          must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

          minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

          masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

          1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

          shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

          short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

          vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

          substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

          lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

          metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

          syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

          lengthening (1980118)

          Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

          neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

          affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

          lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

          apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

          vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

          Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

          the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

          be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

          to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

          archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

          phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

          possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

          25

          phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

          correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

          observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

          study that

          a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

          order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

          with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

          way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

          1972139)

          which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

          situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

          required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

          vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

          ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

          was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

          manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

          large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

          period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

          language well into the modern language

          Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

          trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

          verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

          that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

          analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

          ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

          prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

          how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

          26

          liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

          eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

          obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

          little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

          the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

          that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

          stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

          correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

          infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

          from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

          is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

          noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

          roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

          root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

          stems was likewise neutralised

          6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

          61 Introduction

          As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

          the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

          in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

          Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

          the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

          diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

          Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

          containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

          27

          which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

          Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

          here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

          contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

          glance

          The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

          earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

          is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

          has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

          phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

          considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

          gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

          mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

          marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

          a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

          ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

          evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

          vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

          are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

          to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

          monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

          vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

          in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

          In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

          mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

          scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

          (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

          28

          length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

          2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

          practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

          stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

          similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

          Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

          the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

          potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

          The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

          the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

          scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

          until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

          made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

          Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

          longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

          Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

          solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

          separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

          were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

          make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

          vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

          the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

          parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

          of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

          sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

          just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

          The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

          that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

          29

          more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

          manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

          because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

          for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

          testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

          small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

          written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

          its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

          like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

          widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

          practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

          harder (which does only rarely occur)

          In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

          Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

          century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

          has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

          (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

          the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

          used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

          systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

          non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

          extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

          It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

          graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

          Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

          and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

          encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

          etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

          30

          author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

          cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

          62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

          Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

          in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

          occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

          subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

          For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

          commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

          number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

          desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

          including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

          GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

          abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

          4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

          Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

          Grg)

          31

          Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

          237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

          VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

          (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

          heacutet heacutett

          het

          3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

          VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

          fexkfecc fecc

          FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

          GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

          gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

          (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

          gek geck gek

          HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

          heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

          HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

          VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

          SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

          ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

          3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

          Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

          her (44) her (38) heacuter

          her (2) her

          her (3) her (16)

          her (3) her (2) heacuter

          her her (3)

          In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

          once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

          other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

          person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

          overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

          between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

          6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

          32

          instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

          ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

          accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

          VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

          only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

          15 4to see below)

          63 Holm perg 15 4to

          One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

          so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

          about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

          extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

          scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

          orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

          that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

          20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

          hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

          been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

          scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

          popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

          Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

          but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

          several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

          the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

          time span between the writing of its single parts

          Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

          mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

          33

          up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

          called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

          manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

          According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

          placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

          of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

          Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

          and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

          times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

          more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

          lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

          of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

          The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

          Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

          others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

          orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

          Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

          a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

          either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

          b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

          lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

          c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

          In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

          lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

          derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

          of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

          historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

          34

          kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

          development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

          [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

          always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

          manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

          Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

          spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

          would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

          bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

          with some instances of derounding to e

          bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

          lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

          reported 44 see table above)

          bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

          far the instances where it is absent

          bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

          diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

          35

          Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

          divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

          Weenen (2000)

          Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

          a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

          feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

          helt heck (3) hek

          ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

          d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

          62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

          g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

          97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

          heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

          64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

          A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

          manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

          (1955) contains the following manuscripts

          bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

          III)

          bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

          bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

          bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

          36

          Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

          Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

          VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

          ecc (3)

          FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

          GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

          gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

          HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

          hellthelt

          HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

          VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

          SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

          ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

          ſnere ſneɼe

          VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

          heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

          heacutet hett het (2) hett

          ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

          her (25) heacuter haeligr

          her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

          Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

          ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

          possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

          does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

          preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

          With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

          against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

          given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

          time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

          AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

          received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

          37

          richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

          when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

          65 NRA 52

          Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

          the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

          and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

          how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

          very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

          length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

          89)

          [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

          vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

          akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

          percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

          In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

          are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

          preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

          forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

          towards a distinctively short vowel

          66 GKS 2087 4to

          The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

          precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

          38

          manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

          one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

          continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

          the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

          short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

          class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

          Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

          according to Buergel (1904)

          Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

          Orthography N of Occurrences

          VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

          VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

          VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

          HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

          FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

          GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

          VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

          RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

          VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

          Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

          correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

          no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

          39

          67 AM 519a 4deg

          The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

          the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

          Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

          parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

          Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

          which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

          language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

          Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

          Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

          clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

          by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

          spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

          century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

          The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

          appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

          Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

          attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

          instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

          ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

          for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

          79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

          4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

          times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

          accent mark to denote vowel length

          40

          68 AM 132 fol

          The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

          (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

          included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

          as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

          seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

          Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

          and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

          that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

          secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

          an their spelling discussed below)

          Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

          faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

          feacutekk fingu fenginn

          (finginn)

          falla fell fellu fallinn

          feacutell feacutellu

          ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

          gingu (gingit)

          halda helt heldu haldinn

          heacutelt heacuteldu

          Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

          notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

          accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

          vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

          other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

          41

          are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

          ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

          Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

          ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

          Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

          Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

          occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

          (23819)

          But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

          diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

          halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

          preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

          without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

          times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

          neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

          [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

          preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

          times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

          an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

          nor accent mark

          Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

          diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

          hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

          do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

          expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

          here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

          heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

          42

          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

          accent mark

          69 Summary

          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

          43

          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

          language

          7 Conclusions

          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

          44

          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

          of Old English and Old High German

          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

          place

          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

          etc)

          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

          different processes

          45

          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

          subclass VIIc preterites)

          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

          its preterite forms

          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

          46

          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

          47

          8 Bibliography

          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

          48

          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

          109159-178

          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

          Hamburg

          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

          2009

          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

          Heidelberg

          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

          history Word 15 282-312

          49

          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

          Press Oxford

          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

          2333-47

          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

          50

          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

          Leiden University Press Leiden

          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

          Copenhagen

          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

          studie Gleerup Lund

          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

          Society of America Philadelphia

          51

          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

          University Press Oxford

          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

          (Saale)

          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

          Society of America Washington DC

          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

          Ruprecht

          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

          maatschappij Amsterdam

          52

          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

          Lingua 5289-123

          53

          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

            Runar heita geltir en ruacutenar maacutelstafir

            First Grammatical Treatise 8616

            1 Introduction

            The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within

            Germanic linguistic research The preterite of these verbs evolved from

            Proto-Germanic where all strong verbs were once reduplicated1 to the

            attested daughter languages where with the notable exception of Gothic

            (the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable

            phenomenon) very few traces of reduplication are recorded and different

            preterite patterns are found instead Some of them present a vowel

            alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of

            ablaut some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a

            contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable Such verbs are

            attested in all early Germanic languages the best attested ones being

            Gothic Old Norse Old English Old High German Old Saxon and Old

            Frisian although it is evident that at the time of the attestation

            reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming

            the preterite

            Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

            reduplicated preterites The verbs examined here constitute an important

            part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse and

            show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations The main

            difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

            1 See Bammesberger 199415ff Jasanoff 2003168 ff

            4

            forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

            following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

            presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

            1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

            the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

            Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

            Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

            Subclass Vowel Alternation

            Infinitive English Translation

            3p pret sg 3p pret pl

            VII a ei - ē heita be called command

            heacutet heacutetu

            leika play leacutek leacuteku

            VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

            auka add joacutek

            ausa pour joacutes josu

            houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

            ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

            VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

            falla fall fell fellu

            falda fold felt feldu

            blanda blend blett blendu

            ganga walk gekk gengu

            hanga hang hekk hengu

            faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

            VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

            blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

            graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

            laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

            VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

            VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

            gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

            ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

            groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

            ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

            5

            Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

            and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

            into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

            only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

            From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

            forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

            VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

            will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

            14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

            the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

            surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

            vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

            in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

            pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

            diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

            constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

            of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

            As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

            Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

            divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

            early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

            Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

            mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

            Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

            interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

            obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

            tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

            6

            historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

            are to be made

            2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

            Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

            pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

            (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

            originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

            Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

            heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

            vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

            the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

            the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

            Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

            SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

            Front Back Front Back

            High i u ī ū eu [ju]

            Mid e ē2 ai

            Low a ē1 ō au

            7

            Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

            SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

            front back front back front back

            High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

            Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

            Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

            Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

            SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

            front back front back

            High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

            Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

            Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

            Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

            vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

            and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

            were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

            several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

            eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

            of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

            merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

            the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

            low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

            2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

            8

            to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

            Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

            been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

            rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

            central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

            of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

            Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

            the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

            2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

            languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

            diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

            for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

            The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

            new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

            rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

            former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

            front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

            while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

            As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

            to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

            meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

            3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

            4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

            9

            Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

            glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

            was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

            the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

            proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

            the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

            constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

            former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

            separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

            (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

            point on lost any bimoric manifestation

            Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

            UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

            front back front back

            High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

            Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

            Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

            Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

            considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

            by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

            changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

            that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

            always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

            written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

            data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

            length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

            century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

            10

            Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

            quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

            segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

            syllablerdquo

            3 On Reduplication

            Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

            to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

            expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

            characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

            special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

            accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

            European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

            further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

            once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

            there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

            relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

            morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

            history of the Germanic languages

            The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

            and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

            alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

            stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

            that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

            accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

            voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

            instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

            11

            (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

            gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

            number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

            subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

            example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

            alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

            Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

            The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

            Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

            clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

            fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

            it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

            does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

            from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

            Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

            are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

            expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

            While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

            contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

            simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

            were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

            as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

            retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

            Germanic

            blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

            12

            lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

            Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

            are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

            probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

            kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

            considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

            within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

            unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

            subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

            short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

            former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

            as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

            root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

            Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

            reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

            The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

            now summarised as follows

            a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

            preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

            5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

            13

            b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

            and consequently

            c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

            the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

            d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

            of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

            vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

            migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

            e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

            which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

            but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

            easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

            f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

            languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

            subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

            bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

            according to the VIIb alternation)

            The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

            reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

            long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

            even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

            often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

            subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

            subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

            after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

            they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

            has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

            structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

            14

            a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

            CeiC

            b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

            resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

            assimilated

            c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

            vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

            e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

            Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

            and Old Frisian

            An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

            Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

            Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

            Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

            ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

            held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

            felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

            fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

            hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

            gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

            fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

            Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

            later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

            problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

            that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

            As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

            15

            type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

            the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

            productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

            High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

            in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

            VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

            39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

            Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

            Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

            to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

            diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

            definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

            Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

            system although a short vowel seems to dominate

            Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

            option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

            diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

            VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

            Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

            Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

            Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

            fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

            is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

            starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

            ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

            Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

            be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

            Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

            16

            1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

            been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

            of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

            no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

            order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

            way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

            preterites will be examined more specifically

            4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

            Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

            times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

            of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

            following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

            a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

            b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

            Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

            and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

            root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

            analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

            vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

            lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

            vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

            diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

            whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

            17

            syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

            underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

            Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

            a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

            verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

            common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

            lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

            door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

            An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

            phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

            Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

            especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

            is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

            in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

            developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

            (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

            originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

            later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

            by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

            in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

            ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

            alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

            Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

            a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

            especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

            preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

            18

            However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

            phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

            reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

            Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

            vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

            agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

            those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

            infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

            Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

            formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

            Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

            Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

            having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

            produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

            new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

            as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

            ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

            developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

            actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

            that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

            discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

            Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

            North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

            diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

            gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

            the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

            from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

            19

            Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

            (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

            reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

            generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

            syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

            opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

            lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

            subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

            that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

            syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

            Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

            notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

            ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

            established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

            that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

            and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

            that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

            restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

            Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

            ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

            monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

            plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

            alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

            noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

            place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

            syllable however

            20

            5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

            Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

            Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

            short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

            ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

            ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

            quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

            noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

            that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

            the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

            P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

            and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

            borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

            substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

            vowel in Germanic

            According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

            distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

            derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

            instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

            to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

            assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

            is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

            loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

            innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

            The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

            does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

            21

            inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

            own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

            Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

            (199134)

            According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

            present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

            some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

            however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

            when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

            occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

            possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

            Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

            This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

            in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

            time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

            VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

            sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

            preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

            span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

            known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

            changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

            bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

            elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

            wit the present stem)

            bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

            lē2t-

            bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

            22

            Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

            But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

            elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

            the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

            Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

            Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

            retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

            elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

            amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

            lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

            haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

            tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

            time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

            been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

            no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

            being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

            The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

            an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

            that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

            discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

            recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

            particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

            of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

            cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

            Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

            strong verbs

            The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

            such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

            23

            change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

            Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

            instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

            been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

            subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

            orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

            Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

            j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

            very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

            class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

            only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

            result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

            such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

            e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

            Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

            (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

            particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

            (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

            long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

            is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

            regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

            generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

            occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

            frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

            Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

            Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

            hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

            adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

            24

            exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

            of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

            fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

            must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

            minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

            masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

            1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

            shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

            short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

            vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

            substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

            lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

            metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

            syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

            lengthening (1980118)

            Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

            neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

            affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

            lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

            apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

            vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

            Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

            the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

            be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

            to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

            archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

            phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

            possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

            25

            phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

            correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

            observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

            study that

            a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

            order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

            with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

            way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

            1972139)

            which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

            situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

            required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

            vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

            ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

            was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

            manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

            large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

            period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

            language well into the modern language

            Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

            trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

            verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

            that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

            analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

            ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

            prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

            how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

            26

            liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

            eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

            obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

            little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

            the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

            that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

            stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

            correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

            infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

            from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

            is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

            noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

            roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

            root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

            stems was likewise neutralised

            6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

            61 Introduction

            As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

            the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

            in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

            Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

            the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

            diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

            Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

            containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

            27

            which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

            Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

            here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

            contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

            glance

            The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

            earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

            is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

            has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

            phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

            considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

            gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

            mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

            marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

            a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

            ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

            evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

            vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

            are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

            to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

            monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

            vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

            in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

            In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

            mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

            scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

            (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

            28

            length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

            2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

            practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

            stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

            similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

            Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

            the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

            potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

            The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

            the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

            scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

            until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

            made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

            Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

            longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

            Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

            solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

            separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

            were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

            make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

            vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

            the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

            parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

            of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

            sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

            just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

            The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

            that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

            29

            more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

            manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

            because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

            for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

            testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

            small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

            written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

            its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

            like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

            widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

            practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

            harder (which does only rarely occur)

            In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

            Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

            century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

            has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

            (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

            the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

            used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

            systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

            non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

            extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

            It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

            graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

            Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

            and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

            encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

            etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

            30

            author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

            cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

            62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

            Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

            in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

            occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

            subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

            For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

            commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

            number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

            desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

            including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

            GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

            abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

            4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

            Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

            Grg)

            31

            Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

            237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

            VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

            (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

            heacutet heacutett

            het

            3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

            VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

            fexkfecc fecc

            FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

            GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

            gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

            (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

            gek geck gek

            HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

            heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

            HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

            VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

            SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

            ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

            3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

            Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

            her (44) her (38) heacuter

            her (2) her

            her (3) her (16)

            her (3) her (2) heacuter

            her her (3)

            In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

            once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

            other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

            person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

            overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

            between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

            6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

            32

            instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

            ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

            accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

            VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

            only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

            15 4to see below)

            63 Holm perg 15 4to

            One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

            so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

            about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

            extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

            scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

            orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

            that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

            20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

            hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

            been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

            scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

            popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

            Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

            but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

            several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

            the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

            time span between the writing of its single parts

            Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

            mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

            33

            up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

            called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

            manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

            According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

            placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

            of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

            Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

            and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

            times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

            more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

            lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

            of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

            The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

            Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

            others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

            orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

            Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

            a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

            either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

            b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

            lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

            c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

            In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

            lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

            derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

            of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

            historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

            34

            kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

            development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

            [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

            always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

            manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

            Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

            spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

            would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

            bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

            with some instances of derounding to e

            bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

            lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

            reported 44 see table above)

            bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

            far the instances where it is absent

            bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

            diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

            35

            Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

            divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

            Weenen (2000)

            Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

            a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

            feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

            helt heck (3) hek

            ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

            d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

            62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

            g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

            97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

            heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

            64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

            A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

            manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

            (1955) contains the following manuscripts

            bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

            III)

            bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

            bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

            bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

            36

            Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

            Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

            VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

            ecc (3)

            FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

            GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

            gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

            HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

            hellthelt

            HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

            VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

            SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

            ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

            ſnere ſneɼe

            VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

            heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

            heacutet hett het (2) hett

            ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

            her (25) heacuter haeligr

            her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

            Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

            ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

            possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

            does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

            preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

            With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

            against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

            given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

            time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

            AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

            received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

            37

            richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

            when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

            65 NRA 52

            Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

            the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

            and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

            how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

            very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

            length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

            89)

            [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

            vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

            akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

            percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

            In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

            are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

            preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

            forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

            towards a distinctively short vowel

            66 GKS 2087 4to

            The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

            precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

            38

            manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

            one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

            continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

            the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

            short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

            class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

            Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

            according to Buergel (1904)

            Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

            Orthography N of Occurrences

            VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

            VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

            VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

            HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

            FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

            GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

            VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

            RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

            VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

            Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

            correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

            no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

            39

            67 AM 519a 4deg

            The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

            the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

            Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

            parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

            Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

            which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

            language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

            Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

            Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

            clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

            by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

            spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

            century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

            The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

            appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

            Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

            attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

            instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

            ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

            for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

            79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

            4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

            times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

            accent mark to denote vowel length

            40

            68 AM 132 fol

            The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

            (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

            included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

            as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

            seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

            Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

            and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

            that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

            secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

            an their spelling discussed below)

            Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

            faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

            feacutekk fingu fenginn

            (finginn)

            falla fell fellu fallinn

            feacutell feacutellu

            ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

            gingu (gingit)

            halda helt heldu haldinn

            heacutelt heacuteldu

            Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

            notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

            accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

            vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

            other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

            41

            are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

            ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

            Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

            ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

            Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

            Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

            occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

            (23819)

            But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

            diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

            halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

            preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

            without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

            times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

            neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

            [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

            preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

            times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

            an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

            nor accent mark

            Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

            diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

            hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

            do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

            expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

            here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

            heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

            42

            the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

            accent mark

            69 Summary

            To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

            texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

            short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

            similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

            largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

            characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

            in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

            in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

            subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

            has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

            the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

            of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

            Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

            always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

            the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

            diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

            as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

            short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

            (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

            with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

            only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

            will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

            reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

            43

            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

            language

            7 Conclusions

            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

            44

            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

            of Old English and Old High German

            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

            place

            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

            etc)

            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

            different processes

            45

            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

            subclass VIIc preterites)

            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

            its preterite forms

            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

            46

            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

            47

            8 Bibliography

            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

            48

            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

            109159-178

            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

            Hamburg

            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

            2009

            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

            Heidelberg

            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

            history Word 15 282-312

            49

            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

            Press Oxford

            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

            2333-47

            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

            50

            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

            Leiden University Press Leiden

            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

            Copenhagen

            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

            studie Gleerup Lund

            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

            Society of America Philadelphia

            51

            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

            University Press Oxford

            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

            (Saale)

            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

            Society of America Washington DC

            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

            Ruprecht

            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

            maatschappij Amsterdam

            52

            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

            Lingua 5289-123

            53

            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

              forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class The

              following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been

              presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen

              1970337-339 for the subdivision subclass VIIe only entry bloacuteta is most of

              the times grouped with VIId the glosses are reported as according to

              Cleasby-Vigfuacutesson 1874)

              Table 1 The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

              Subclass Vowel Alternation

              Infinitive English Translation

              3p pret sg 3p pret pl

              VII a ei - ē heita be called command

              heacutet heacutetu

              leika play leacutek leacuteku

              VII b au - jō hlaupa run hljoacutep hlupu

              auka add joacutek

              ausa pour joacutes josu

              houmlggva chop hjoacute hjoggu hjuggu

              ū - jō buacutea dwell bjoacute bjoggu bjoumlggu bjuggu

              VII c a - e halda hold helt heldu

              falla fall fell fellu

              falda fold felt feldu

              blanda blend blett blendu

              ganga walk gekk gengu

              hanga hang hekk hengu

              faacute (lt fanhaną) get fekk fengu

              VII d ā - ē raacuteetha rule reacuteeth reacuteethu

              blaacutesa blow bleacutes bleacutesu

              graacuteta weep greacutet greacutetu

              laacuteta let leacutet leacutetu

              VII e ō - ē bloacuteta bleed bleacutet bleacutetu

              VII f ū - e snuacutea turn snoslashra snera sneru

              gnuacutea rub gnoslashra gnera gnoslashru gneru

              ō - e roacutea row roslashra rera roslashru reru

              groacutea grow groslashra grera groslashru greru

              ā - e saacute sow soslashra sera soslashru seru

              5

              Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

              and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

              into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

              only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

              From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

              forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

              VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

              will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

              14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

              the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

              surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

              vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

              in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

              pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

              diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

              constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

              of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

              As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

              Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

              divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

              early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

              Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

              mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

              Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

              interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

              obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

              tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

              6

              historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

              are to be made

              2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

              Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

              pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

              (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

              originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

              Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

              heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

              vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

              the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

              the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

              Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

              SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

              Front Back Front Back

              High i u ī ū eu [ju]

              Mid e ē2 ai

              Low a ē1 ō au

              7

              Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

              SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

              front back front back front back

              High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

              Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

              Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

              Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

              SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

              front back front back

              High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

              Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

              Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

              Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

              vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

              and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

              were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

              several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

              eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

              of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

              merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

              the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

              low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

              2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

              8

              to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

              Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

              been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

              rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

              central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

              of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

              Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

              the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

              2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

              languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

              diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

              for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

              The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

              new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

              rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

              former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

              front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

              while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

              As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

              to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

              meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

              3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

              4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

              9

              Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

              glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

              was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

              the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

              proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

              the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

              constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

              former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

              separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

              (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

              point on lost any bimoric manifestation

              Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

              UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

              front back front back

              High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

              Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

              Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

              Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

              considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

              by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

              changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

              that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

              always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

              written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

              data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

              length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

              century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

              10

              Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

              quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

              segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

              syllablerdquo

              3 On Reduplication

              Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

              to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

              expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

              characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

              special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

              accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

              European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

              further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

              once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

              there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

              relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

              morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

              history of the Germanic languages

              The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

              and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

              alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

              stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

              that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

              accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

              voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

              instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

              11

              (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

              gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

              number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

              subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

              example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

              alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

              Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

              The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

              Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

              clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

              fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

              it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

              does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

              from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

              Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

              are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

              expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

              While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

              contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

              simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

              were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

              as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

              retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

              Germanic

              blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

              12

              lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

              Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

              are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

              probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

              kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

              considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

              within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

              unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

              subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

              short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

              former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

              as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

              root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

              Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

              reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

              The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

              now summarised as follows

              a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

              preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

              5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

              13

              b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

              and consequently

              c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

              the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

              d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

              of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

              vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

              migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

              e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

              which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

              but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

              easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

              f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

              languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

              subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

              bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

              according to the VIIb alternation)

              The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

              reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

              long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

              even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

              often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

              subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

              subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

              after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

              they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

              has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

              structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

              14

              a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

              CeiC

              b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

              resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

              assimilated

              c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

              vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

              e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

              Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

              and Old Frisian

              An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

              Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

              Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

              Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

              ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

              held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

              felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

              fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

              hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

              gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

              fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

              Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

              later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

              problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

              that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

              As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

              15

              type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

              the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

              productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

              High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

              in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

              VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

              39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

              Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

              Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

              to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

              diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

              definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

              Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

              system although a short vowel seems to dominate

              Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

              option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

              diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

              VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

              Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

              Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

              Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

              fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

              is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

              starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

              ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

              Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

              be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

              Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

              16

              1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

              been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

              of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

              no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

              order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

              way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

              preterites will be examined more specifically

              4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

              Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

              times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

              of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

              following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

              a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

              b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

              Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

              and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

              root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

              analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

              vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

              lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

              vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

              diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

              whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

              17

              syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

              underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

              Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

              a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

              verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

              common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

              lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

              door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

              An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

              phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

              Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

              especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

              is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

              in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

              developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

              (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

              originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

              later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

              by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

              in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

              ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

              alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

              Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

              a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

              especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

              preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

              18

              However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

              phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

              reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

              Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

              vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

              agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

              those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

              infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

              Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

              formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

              Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

              Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

              having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

              produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

              new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

              as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

              ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

              developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

              actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

              that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

              discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

              Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

              North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

              diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

              gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

              the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

              from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

              19

              Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

              (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

              reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

              generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

              syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

              opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

              lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

              subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

              that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

              syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

              Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

              notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

              ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

              established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

              that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

              and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

              that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

              restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

              Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

              ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

              monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

              plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

              alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

              noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

              place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

              syllable however

              20

              5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

              Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

              Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

              short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

              ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

              ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

              quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

              noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

              that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

              the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

              P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

              and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

              borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

              substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

              vowel in Germanic

              According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

              distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

              derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

              instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

              to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

              assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

              is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

              loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

              innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

              The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

              does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

              21

              inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

              own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

              Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

              (199134)

              According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

              present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

              some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

              however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

              when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

              occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

              possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

              Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

              This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

              in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

              time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

              VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

              sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

              preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

              span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

              known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

              changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

              bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

              elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

              wit the present stem)

              bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

              lē2t-

              bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

              22

              Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

              But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

              elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

              the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

              Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

              Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

              retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

              elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

              amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

              lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

              haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

              tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

              time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

              been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

              no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

              being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

              The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

              an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

              that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

              discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

              recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

              particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

              of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

              cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

              Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

              strong verbs

              The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

              such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

              23

              change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

              Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

              instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

              been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

              subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

              orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

              Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

              j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

              very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

              class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

              only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

              result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

              such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

              e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

              Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

              (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

              particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

              (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

              long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

              is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

              regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

              generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

              occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

              frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

              Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

              Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

              hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

              adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

              24

              exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

              of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

              fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

              must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

              minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

              masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

              1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

              shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

              short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

              vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

              substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

              lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

              metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

              syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

              lengthening (1980118)

              Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

              neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

              affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

              lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

              apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

              vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

              Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

              the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

              be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

              to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

              archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

              phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

              possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

              25

              phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

              correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

              observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

              study that

              a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

              order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

              with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

              way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

              1972139)

              which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

              situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

              required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

              vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

              ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

              was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

              manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

              large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

              period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

              language well into the modern language

              Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

              trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

              verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

              that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

              analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

              ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

              prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

              how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

              26

              liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

              eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

              obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

              little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

              the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

              that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

              stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

              correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

              infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

              from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

              is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

              noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

              roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

              root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

              stems was likewise neutralised

              6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

              61 Introduction

              As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

              the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

              in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

              Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

              the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

              diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

              Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

              containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

              27

              which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

              Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

              here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

              contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

              glance

              The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

              earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

              is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

              has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

              phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

              considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

              gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

              mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

              marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

              a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

              ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

              evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

              vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

              are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

              to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

              monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

              vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

              in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

              In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

              mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

              scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

              (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

              28

              length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

              2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

              practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

              stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

              similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

              Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

              the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

              potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

              The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

              the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

              scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

              until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

              made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

              Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

              longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

              Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

              solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

              separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

              were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

              make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

              vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

              the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

              parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

              of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

              sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

              just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

              The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

              that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

              29

              more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

              manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

              because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

              for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

              testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

              small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

              written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

              its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

              like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

              widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

              practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

              harder (which does only rarely occur)

              In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

              Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

              century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

              has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

              (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

              the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

              used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

              systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

              non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

              extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

              It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

              graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

              Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

              and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

              encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

              etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

              30

              author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

              cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

              62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

              Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

              in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

              occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

              subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

              For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

              commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

              number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

              desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

              including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

              GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

              abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

              4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

              Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

              Grg)

              31

              Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

              237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

              VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

              (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

              heacutet heacutett

              het

              3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

              VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

              fexkfecc fecc

              FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

              GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

              gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

              (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

              gek geck gek

              HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

              heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

              HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

              VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

              SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

              ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

              3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

              Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

              her (44) her (38) heacuter

              her (2) her

              her (3) her (16)

              her (3) her (2) heacuter

              her her (3)

              In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

              once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

              other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

              person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

              overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

              between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

              6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

              32

              instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

              ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

              accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

              VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

              only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

              15 4to see below)

              63 Holm perg 15 4to

              One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

              so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

              about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

              extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

              scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

              orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

              that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

              20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

              hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

              been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

              scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

              popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

              Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

              but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

              several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

              the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

              time span between the writing of its single parts

              Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

              mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

              33

              up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

              called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

              manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

              According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

              placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

              of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

              Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

              and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

              times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

              more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

              lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

              of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

              The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

              Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

              others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

              orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

              Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

              a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

              either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

              b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

              lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

              c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

              In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

              lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

              derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

              of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

              historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

              34

              kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

              development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

              [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

              always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

              manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

              Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

              spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

              would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

              bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

              with some instances of derounding to e

              bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

              lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

              reported 44 see table above)

              bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

              far the instances where it is absent

              bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

              diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

              35

              Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

              divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

              Weenen (2000)

              Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

              a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

              feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

              helt heck (3) hek

              ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

              d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

              62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

              g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

              97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

              heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

              64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

              A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

              manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

              (1955) contains the following manuscripts

              bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

              III)

              bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

              bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

              bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

              36

              Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

              Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

              VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

              ecc (3)

              FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

              GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

              gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

              HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

              hellthelt

              HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

              VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

              SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

              ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

              ſnere ſneɼe

              VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

              heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

              heacutet hett het (2) hett

              ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

              her (25) heacuter haeligr

              her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

              Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

              ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

              possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

              does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

              preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

              With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

              against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

              given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

              time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

              AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

              received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

              37

              richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

              when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

              65 NRA 52

              Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

              the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

              and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

              how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

              very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

              length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

              89)

              [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

              vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

              akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

              percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

              In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

              are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

              preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

              forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

              towards a distinctively short vowel

              66 GKS 2087 4to

              The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

              precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

              38

              manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

              one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

              continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

              the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

              short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

              class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

              Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

              according to Buergel (1904)

              Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

              Orthography N of Occurrences

              VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

              VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

              VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

              HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

              FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

              GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

              VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

              RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

              VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

              Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

              correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

              no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

              39

              67 AM 519a 4deg

              The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

              the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

              Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

              parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

              Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

              which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

              language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

              Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

              Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

              clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

              by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

              spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

              century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

              The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

              appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

              Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

              attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

              instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

              ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

              for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

              79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

              4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

              times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

              accent mark to denote vowel length

              40

              68 AM 132 fol

              The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

              (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

              included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

              as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

              seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

              Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

              and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

              that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

              secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

              an their spelling discussed below)

              Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

              faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

              feacutekk fingu fenginn

              (finginn)

              falla fell fellu fallinn

              feacutell feacutellu

              ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

              gingu (gingit)

              halda helt heldu haldinn

              heacutelt heacuteldu

              Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

              notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

              accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

              vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

              other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

              41

              are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

              ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

              Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

              ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

              Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

              Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

              occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

              (23819)

              But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

              diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

              halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

              preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

              without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

              times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

              neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

              [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

              preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

              times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

              an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

              nor accent mark

              Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

              diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

              hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

              do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

              expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

              here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

              heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

              42

              the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

              accent mark

              69 Summary

              To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

              texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

              short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

              similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

              largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

              characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

              in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

              in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

              subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

              has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

              the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

              of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

              Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

              always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

              the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

              diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

              as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

              short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

              (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

              with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

              only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

              will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

              reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

              43

              spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

              language

              7 Conclusions

              As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

              (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

              attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

              of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

              singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

              Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

              to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

              likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

              which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

              root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

              vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

              syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

              are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

              produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

              Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

              of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

              VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

              long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

              preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

              chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

              may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

              obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

              reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

              44

              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

              of Old English and Old High German

              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

              place

              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

              etc)

              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

              different processes

              45

              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

              subclass VIIc preterites)

              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

              its preterite forms

              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

              46

              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

              47

              8 Bibliography

              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

              48

              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

              109159-178

              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

              Hamburg

              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

              2009

              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

              Heidelberg

              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

              history Word 15 282-312

              49

              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

              Press Oxford

              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

              2333-47

              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

              50

              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

              Leiden University Press Leiden

              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

              Copenhagen

              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

              studie Gleerup Lund

              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

              Society of America Philadelphia

              51

              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

              University Press Oxford

              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

              (Saale)

              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

              Society of America Washington DC

              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

              Ruprecht

              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

              maatschappij Amsterdam

              52

              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

              Lingua 5289-123

              53

              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                Moreover Noreen (1923338-339) lists sveipa (pret sveip) in subclass VIIa

                and mentions two isolated participles eikinn and aldinn which could fit

                into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively The verb bnuacutea in VIIf (attested

                only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnuacutea

                From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular

                forms except subclass VIIf (sneri reri etc) are monosyllabic and except

                VIIc (helt fekk etc) and again VIIf all have a long root vowel This study

                will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes as in the course of the

                14th century for subclass VIIc and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf

                the root vowel in the preterite usually believed to once be have been short

                surfaces as a diphthong written ltiegt just as if it had come from a long

                vowel (ē) The effects of such sound change are still very well observable

                in modern Icelandic where the spelling lteacutegt reflects a [je][je]

                pronunciation The dynamics according to which this unusual

                diphthongisation took place are still unknown and such lack of knowledge

                constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development

                of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic

                As it will be shown vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

                Icelandic written sources That the vowel system was internally distinctively

                divided by the feature of length seems to have been well known even to

                early 12th-century Icelanders as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical

                Treatise (see below) Individual scribes however may oftentimes fail to

                mark vowel length by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently

                Moreover contamination among divergent scribal practices and

                interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may

                obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further Before

                tackling the problem of the orthography a few considerations about the

                6

                historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

                are to be made

                2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

                Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

                pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

                (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

                originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

                Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

                heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

                vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

                the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

                the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

                Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

                SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

                Front Back Front Back

                High i u ī ū eu [ju]

                Mid e ē2 ai

                Low a ē1 ō au

                7

                Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

                SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

                front back front back front back

                High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

                Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

                Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

                Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

                SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

                front back front back

                High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

                Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

                Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

                Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

                vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

                and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

                were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

                several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

                eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

                of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

                merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

                the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

                low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

                2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

                8

                to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

                Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

                been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

                rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

                central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

                of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

                Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

                the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

                2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

                languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

                diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

                for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

                The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

                new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

                rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

                former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

                front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

                while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

                As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

                to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

                meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

                3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

                4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

                9

                Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

                glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

                was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

                the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

                proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

                the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

                constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

                former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

                separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

                (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

                point on lost any bimoric manifestation

                Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

                UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

                front back front back

                High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

                Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

                Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

                Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

                considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

                by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

                changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

                that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

                always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

                written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

                data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

                length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

                century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

                10

                Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                syllablerdquo

                3 On Reduplication

                Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                history of the Germanic languages

                The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                11

                (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                Germanic

                blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                12

                lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                now summarised as follows

                a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                13

                b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                and consequently

                c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                according to the VIIb alternation)

                The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                14

                a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                CeiC

                b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                assimilated

                c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                and Old Frisian

                An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                15

                type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                16

                1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                preterites will be examined more specifically

                4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                17

                syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                18

                However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                19

                Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                syllable however

                20

                5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                vowel in Germanic

                According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                21

                inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                (199134)

                According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                wit the present stem)

                bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                lē2t-

                bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                22

                Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                strong verbs

                The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                23

                change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                24

                exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                lengthening (1980118)

                Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                25

                phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                study that

                a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                1972139)

                which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                language well into the modern language

                Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                26

                liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                stems was likewise neutralised

                6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                61 Introduction

                As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                27

                which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                glance

                The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                28

                length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                29

                more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                harder (which does only rarely occur)

                In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                30

                author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                Grg)

                31

                Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                heacutet heacutett

                het

                3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                fexkfecc fecc

                FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                gek geck gek

                HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                her (44) her (38) heacuter

                her (2) her

                her (3) her (16)

                her (3) her (2) heacuter

                her her (3)

                In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                32

                instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                15 4to see below)

                63 Holm perg 15 4to

                One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                time span between the writing of its single parts

                Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                33

                up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                34

                kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                with some instances of derounding to e

                bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                reported 44 see table above)

                bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                far the instances where it is absent

                bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                35

                Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                Weenen (2000)

                Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                helt heck (3) hek

                ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                III)

                bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                36

                Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                ecc (3)

                FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                hellthelt

                HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                ſnere ſneɼe

                VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                heacutet hett het (2) hett

                ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                her (25) heacuter haeligr

                her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                37

                richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                65 NRA 52

                Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                89)

                [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                towards a distinctively short vowel

                66 GKS 2087 4to

                The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                38

                manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                according to Buergel (1904)

                Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                Orthography N of Occurrences

                VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                39

                67 AM 519a 4deg

                The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                accent mark to denote vowel length

                40

                68 AM 132 fol

                The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                an their spelling discussed below)

                Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                feacutekk fingu fenginn

                (finginn)

                falla fell fellu fallinn

                feacutell feacutellu

                ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                gingu (gingit)

                halda helt heldu haldinn

                heacutelt heacuteldu

                Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                41

                are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                (23819)

                But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                nor accent mark

                Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                42

                the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                accent mark

                69 Summary

                To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                43

                spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                language

                7 Conclusions

                As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                44

                Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                of Old English and Old High German

                Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                place

                a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                etc)

                b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                different processes

                45

                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                subclass VIIc preterites)

                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                its preterite forms

                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                46

                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                47

                8 Bibliography

                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                48

                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                109159-178

                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                Hamburg

                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                2009

                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                Heidelberg

                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                history Word 15 282-312

                49

                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                Press Oxford

                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                2333-47

                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                50

                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                Leiden University Press Leiden

                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                Copenhagen

                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                studie Gleerup Lund

                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                Society of America Philadelphia

                51

                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                University Press Oxford

                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                (Saale)

                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                Society of America Washington DC

                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                Ruprecht

                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                maatschappij Amsterdam

                52

                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                Lingua 5289-123

                53

                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                  historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication

                  are to be made

                  2 The Old Icelandic Vowel System

                  Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

                  pattern ie syllable length could be of three types light (VC) heavy

                  (VC or VC) and hyper-characterised (VC) Vowel length was

                  originally contrastive and independent from any other variable The Old

                  Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being

                  heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage which re-shaped

                  vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of

                  the new vowels arising from umlaut processes ultimately greatly enlarging

                  the inherited phoneme inventory (cf Garnes 1976196-199 )

                  Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

                  SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

                  Front Back Front Back

                  High i u ī ū eu [ju]

                  Mid e ē2 ai

                  Low a ē1 ō au

                  7

                  Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

                  SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

                  front back front back front back

                  High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

                  Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

                  Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

                  Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

                  SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

                  front back front back

                  High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

                  Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

                  Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

                  Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

                  vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

                  and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

                  were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

                  several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

                  eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

                  of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

                  merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

                  the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

                  low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

                  2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

                  8

                  to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

                  Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

                  been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

                  rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

                  central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

                  of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

                  Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

                  the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

                  2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

                  languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

                  diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

                  for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

                  The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

                  new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

                  rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

                  former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

                  front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

                  while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

                  As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

                  to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

                  meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

                  3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

                  4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

                  9

                  Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

                  glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

                  was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

                  the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

                  proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

                  the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

                  constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

                  former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

                  separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

                  (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

                  point on lost any bimoric manifestation

                  Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

                  UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

                  front back front back

                  High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

                  Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

                  Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

                  Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

                  considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

                  by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

                  changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

                  that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

                  always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

                  written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

                  data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

                  length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

                  century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

                  10

                  Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                  quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                  segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                  syllablerdquo

                  3 On Reduplication

                  Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                  to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                  expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                  characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                  special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                  accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                  European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                  further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                  once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                  there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                  relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                  morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                  history of the Germanic languages

                  The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                  and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                  alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                  stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                  that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                  accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                  voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                  instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                  11

                  (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                  gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                  number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                  subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                  example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                  alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                  Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                  The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                  Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                  clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                  fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                  it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                  does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                  from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                  Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                  are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                  expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                  While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                  contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                  simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                  were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                  as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                  retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                  Germanic

                  blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                  12

                  lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                  Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                  are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                  probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                  kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                  considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                  within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                  unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                  subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                  short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                  former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                  as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                  root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                  Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                  reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                  The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                  now summarised as follows

                  a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                  preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                  5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                  13

                  b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                  and consequently

                  c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                  the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                  d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                  of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                  vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                  migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                  e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                  which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                  but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                  easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                  f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                  languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                  subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                  bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                  according to the VIIb alternation)

                  The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                  reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                  long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                  even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                  often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                  subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                  subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                  after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                  they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                  has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                  structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                  14

                  a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                  CeiC

                  b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                  resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                  assimilated

                  c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                  vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                  e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                  Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                  and Old Frisian

                  An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                  Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                  Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                  Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                  ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                  held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                  felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                  fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                  hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                  gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                  fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                  Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                  later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                  problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                  that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                  As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                  15

                  type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                  the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                  productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                  High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                  in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                  VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                  39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                  Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                  Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                  to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                  diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                  definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                  Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                  system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                  Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                  option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                  diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                  VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                  Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                  Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                  Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                  fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                  is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                  starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                  ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                  Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                  be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                  Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                  16

                  1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                  been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                  of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                  no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                  order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                  way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                  preterites will be examined more specifically

                  4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                  Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                  times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                  of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                  following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                  a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                  b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                  Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                  and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                  root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                  analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                  vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                  lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                  vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                  diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                  whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                  17

                  syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                  underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                  Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                  a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                  verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                  common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                  lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                  door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                  An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                  phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                  Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                  especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                  is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                  in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                  developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                  (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                  originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                  later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                  by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                  in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                  ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                  alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                  Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                  a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                  especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                  preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                  18

                  However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                  phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                  reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                  Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                  vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                  agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                  those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                  infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                  Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                  formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                  Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                  Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                  having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                  produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                  new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                  as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                  ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                  developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                  actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                  that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                  discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                  Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                  North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                  diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                  gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                  the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                  from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                  19

                  Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                  (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                  reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                  generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                  syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                  opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                  lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                  subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                  that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                  syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                  Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                  notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                  ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                  established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                  that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                  and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                  that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                  restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                  Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                  ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                  monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                  plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                  alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                  noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                  place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                  syllable however

                  20

                  5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                  Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                  Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                  short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                  ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                  ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                  quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                  noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                  that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                  the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                  P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                  and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                  borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                  substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                  vowel in Germanic

                  According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                  distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                  derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                  instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                  to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                  assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                  is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                  loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                  innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                  The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                  does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                  21

                  inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                  own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                  Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                  (199134)

                  According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                  present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                  some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                  however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                  when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                  occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                  possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                  Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                  This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                  in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                  time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                  VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                  sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                  preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                  span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                  known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                  changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                  bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                  elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                  wit the present stem)

                  bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                  lē2t-

                  bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                  22

                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                  But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                  elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                  the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                  Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                  Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                  retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                  elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                  amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                  lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                  haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                  tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                  time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                  been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                  no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                  being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                  The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                  an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                  that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                  discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                  recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                  particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                  of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                  cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                  Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                  strong verbs

                  The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                  such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                  23

                  change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                  Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                  instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                  been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                  subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                  orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                  Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                  j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                  very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                  class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                  only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                  result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                  such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                  e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                  Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                  (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                  particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                  (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                  long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                  is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                  regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                  generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                  occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                  frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                  Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                  Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                  hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                  adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                  24

                  exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                  of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                  fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                  must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                  minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                  masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                  1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                  shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                  short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                  vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                  substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                  lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                  metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                  syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                  lengthening (1980118)

                  Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                  neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                  affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                  lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                  apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                  vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                  Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                  the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                  be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                  to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                  archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                  phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                  possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                  25

                  phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                  correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                  observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                  study that

                  a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                  order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                  with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                  way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                  1972139)

                  which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                  situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                  required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                  vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                  ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                  was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                  manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                  large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                  period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                  language well into the modern language

                  Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                  trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                  verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                  that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                  analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                  ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                  prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                  how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                  26

                  liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                  eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                  obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                  little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                  the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                  that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                  stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                  correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                  infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                  from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                  is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                  noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                  roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                  root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                  stems was likewise neutralised

                  6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                  61 Introduction

                  As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                  the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                  in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                  Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                  the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                  diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                  Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                  containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                  27

                  which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                  Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                  here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                  contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                  glance

                  The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                  earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                  is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                  has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                  phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                  considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                  gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                  mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                  marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                  a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                  ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                  evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                  vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                  are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                  to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                  monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                  vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                  in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                  In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                  mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                  scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                  (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                  28

                  length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                  2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                  practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                  stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                  similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                  Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                  the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                  potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                  The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                  the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                  scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                  until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                  made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                  Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                  longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                  Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                  solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                  separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                  were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                  make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                  vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                  the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                  parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                  of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                  sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                  just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                  The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                  that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                  29

                  more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                  manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                  because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                  for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                  testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                  small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                  written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                  its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                  like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                  widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                  practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                  harder (which does only rarely occur)

                  In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                  Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                  century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                  has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                  (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                  the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                  used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                  systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                  non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                  extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                  It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                  graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                  Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                  and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                  encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                  etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                  30

                  author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                  cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                  62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                  Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                  in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                  occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                  subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                  For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                  commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                  number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                  desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                  including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                  GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                  abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                  4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                  Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                  Grg)

                  31

                  Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                  237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                  VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                  (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                  heacutet heacutett

                  het

                  3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                  VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                  fexkfecc fecc

                  FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                  GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                  gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                  (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                  gek geck gek

                  HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                  heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                  HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                  VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                  SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                  ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                  3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                  Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                  her (44) her (38) heacuter

                  her (2) her

                  her (3) her (16)

                  her (3) her (2) heacuter

                  her her (3)

                  In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                  once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                  other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                  person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                  overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                  between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                  6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                  32

                  instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                  ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                  accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                  VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                  only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                  15 4to see below)

                  63 Holm perg 15 4to

                  One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                  so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                  about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                  extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                  scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                  orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                  that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                  20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                  hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                  been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                  scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                  popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                  Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                  but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                  several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                  the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                  time span between the writing of its single parts

                  Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                  mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                  33

                  up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                  called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                  manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                  According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                  placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                  of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                  Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                  and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                  times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                  more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                  lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                  of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                  The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                  Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                  others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                  orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                  Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                  a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                  either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                  b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                  lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                  c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                  In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                  lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                  derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                  of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                  historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                  34

                  kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                  development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                  [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                  always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                  manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                  Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                  spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                  would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                  bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                  with some instances of derounding to e

                  bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                  lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                  reported 44 see table above)

                  bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                  far the instances where it is absent

                  bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                  diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                  35

                  Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                  divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                  Weenen (2000)

                  Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                  a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                  feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                  helt heck (3) hek

                  ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                  d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                  62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                  g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                  97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                  heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                  64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                  A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                  manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                  (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                  bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                  III)

                  bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                  bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                  bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                  36

                  Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                  Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                  VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                  ecc (3)

                  FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                  GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                  gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                  HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                  hellthelt

                  HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                  VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                  SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                  ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                  ſnere ſneɼe

                  VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                  heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                  heacutet hett het (2) hett

                  ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                  her (25) heacuter haeligr

                  her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                  Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                  ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                  possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                  does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                  preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                  With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                  against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                  given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                  time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                  AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                  received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                  37

                  richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                  when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                  65 NRA 52

                  Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                  the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                  and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                  how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                  very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                  length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                  89)

                  [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                  vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                  akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                  percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                  In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                  are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                  preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                  forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                  towards a distinctively short vowel

                  66 GKS 2087 4to

                  The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                  precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                  38

                  manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                  one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                  continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                  the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                  short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                  class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                  Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                  according to Buergel (1904)

                  Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                  Orthography N of Occurrences

                  VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                  VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                  VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                  HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                  FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                  GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                  VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                  RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                  VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                  Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                  correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                  no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                  39

                  67 AM 519a 4deg

                  The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                  the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                  Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                  parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                  Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                  which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                  language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                  Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                  Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                  clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                  by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                  spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                  century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                  The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                  appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                  Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                  attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                  instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                  ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                  for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                  79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                  4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                  times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                  accent mark to denote vowel length

                  40

                  68 AM 132 fol

                  The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                  (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                  included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                  as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                  seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                  Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                  and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                  that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                  secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                  an their spelling discussed below)

                  Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                  faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                  feacutekk fingu fenginn

                  (finginn)

                  falla fell fellu fallinn

                  feacutell feacutellu

                  ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                  gingu (gingit)

                  halda helt heldu haldinn

                  heacutelt heacuteldu

                  Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                  notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                  accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                  vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                  other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                  41

                  are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                  ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                  Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                  ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                  Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                  Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                  occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                  (23819)

                  But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                  diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                  halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                  preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                  without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                  times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                  neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                  [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                  preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                  times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                  an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                  nor accent mark

                  Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                  diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                  hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                  do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                  expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                  here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                  heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                  42

                  the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                  accent mark

                  69 Summary

                  To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                  texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                  short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                  similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                  largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                  characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                  in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                  in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                  subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                  has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                  the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                  of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                  Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                  always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                  the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                  diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                  as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                  short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                  (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                  with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                  only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                  will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                  reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                  43

                  spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                  language

                  7 Conclusions

                  As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                  (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                  attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                  of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                  singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                  Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                  to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                  likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                  which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                  root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                  vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                  syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                  are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                  produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                  Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                  of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                  VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                  long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                  preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                  chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                  may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                  obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                  reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                  44

                  Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                  of Old English and Old High German

                  Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                  several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                  e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                  being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                  the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                  without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                  primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                  neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                  preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                  monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                  and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                  subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                  Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                  place

                  a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                  long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                  etc)

                  b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                  short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                  neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                  Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                  different processes

                  45

                  c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                  subclass VIIc preterites)

                  d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                  its preterite forms

                  e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                  adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                  extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                  Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                  diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                  process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                  typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                  syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                  CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                  CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                  across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                  forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                  diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                  [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                  1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                  [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                  diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                  heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                  gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                  Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                  blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                  Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                  diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                  46

                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                  47

                  8 Bibliography

                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                  48

                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                  109159-178

                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                  Hamburg

                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                  2009

                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                  Heidelberg

                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                  history Word 15 282-312

                  49

                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                  Press Oxford

                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                  2333-47

                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                  50

                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                  Copenhagen

                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                  studie Gleerup Lund

                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                  Society of America Philadelphia

                  51

                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                  University Press Oxford

                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                  (Saale)

                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                  Society of America Washington DC

                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                  Ruprecht

                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                  52

                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                  Lingua 5289-123

                  53

                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                    Table 3 The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

                    SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

                    front back front back front back

                    High i y u iacute yacute uacute ĩ y ũ ey

                    Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ẽ oslash otilde ei

                    Low aelig a ǫ ǽ aacute ǫ aelig atilde ǫ au

                    Table 4 The classical Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200)

                    SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

                    front back front back

                    High i y u iacute yacute uacute ey

                    Mid e oslash o eacute ǿ oacute ei

                    Low a ǫ ǽ aacute au

                    Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century) the

                    vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems of short long

                    and nasal vowels (table 3) Possibly because the short and long subsystems

                    were not symmetrical a significant re-shuffling gradually took place in

                    several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic and

                    eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit

                    of quality Firstly the phonemic distinction between oslash and ǫ which

                    merged into ouml (ca 1200 or shortly thereafter) was neutralised secondly

                    the merger of aelig and ǿ into aelig took place (ca 1250) later long mid and

                    low vowels became diphthongs and syllable types were reduced from four

                    2 According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972128-137) there is enough evidence pointing at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise Being nasality and length superimposable features a more accurate representation would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels however due to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels when a nasal consonant followed I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal correlation as a third type of vowel correlation besides length and shortness

                    8

                    to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

                    Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

                    been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

                    rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

                    central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

                    of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

                    Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

                    the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

                    2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

                    languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

                    diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

                    for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

                    The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

                    new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

                    rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

                    former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

                    front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

                    while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

                    As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

                    to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

                    meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

                    3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

                    4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

                    9

                    Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

                    glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

                    was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

                    the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

                    proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

                    the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

                    constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

                    former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

                    separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

                    (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

                    point on lost any bimoric manifestation

                    Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

                    UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

                    front back front back

                    High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

                    Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

                    Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

                    Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

                    considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

                    by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

                    changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

                    that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

                    always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

                    written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

                    data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

                    length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

                    century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

                    10

                    Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                    quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                    segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                    syllablerdquo

                    3 On Reduplication

                    Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                    to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                    expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                    characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                    special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                    accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                    European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                    further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                    once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                    there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                    relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                    morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                    history of the Germanic languages

                    The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                    and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                    alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                    stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                    that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                    accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                    voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                    instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                    11

                    (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                    gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                    number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                    subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                    example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                    alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                    Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                    The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                    Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                    clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                    fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                    it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                    does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                    from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                    Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                    are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                    expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                    While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                    contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                    simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                    were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                    as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                    retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                    Germanic

                    blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                    12

                    lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                    Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                    are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                    probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                    kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                    considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                    within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                    unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                    subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                    short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                    former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                    as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                    root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                    Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                    reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                    The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                    now summarised as follows

                    a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                    preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                    5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                    13

                    b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                    and consequently

                    c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                    the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                    d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                    of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                    vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                    migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                    e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                    which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                    but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                    easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                    f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                    languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                    subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                    bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                    according to the VIIb alternation)

                    The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                    reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                    long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                    even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                    often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                    subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                    subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                    after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                    they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                    has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                    structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                    14

                    a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                    CeiC

                    b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                    resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                    assimilated

                    c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                    vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                    e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                    Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                    and Old Frisian

                    An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                    Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                    Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                    Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                    ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                    held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                    felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                    fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                    hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                    gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                    fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                    Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                    later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                    problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                    that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                    As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                    15

                    type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                    the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                    productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                    High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                    in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                    VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                    39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                    Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                    Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                    to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                    diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                    definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                    Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                    system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                    Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                    option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                    diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                    VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                    Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                    Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                    Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                    fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                    is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                    starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                    ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                    Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                    be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                    Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                    16

                    1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                    been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                    of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                    no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                    order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                    way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                    preterites will be examined more specifically

                    4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                    Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                    times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                    of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                    following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                    a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                    b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                    Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                    and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                    root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                    analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                    vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                    lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                    vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                    diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                    whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                    17

                    syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                    underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                    Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                    a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                    verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                    common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                    lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                    door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                    An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                    phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                    Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                    especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                    is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                    in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                    developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                    (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                    originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                    later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                    by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                    in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                    ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                    alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                    Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                    a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                    especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                    preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                    18

                    However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                    phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                    reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                    Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                    vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                    agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                    those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                    infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                    Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                    formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                    Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                    Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                    having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                    produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                    new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                    as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                    ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                    developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                    actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                    that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                    discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                    Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                    North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                    diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                    gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                    the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                    from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                    19

                    Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                    (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                    reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                    generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                    syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                    opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                    lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                    subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                    that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                    syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                    Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                    notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                    ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                    established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                    that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                    and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                    that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                    restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                    Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                    ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                    monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                    plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                    alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                    noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                    place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                    syllable however

                    20

                    5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                    Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                    Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                    short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                    ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                    ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                    quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                    noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                    that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                    the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                    P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                    and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                    borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                    substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                    vowel in Germanic

                    According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                    distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                    derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                    instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                    to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                    assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                    is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                    loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                    innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                    The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                    does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                    21

                    inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                    own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                    Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                    (199134)

                    According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                    present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                    some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                    however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                    when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                    occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                    possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                    Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                    This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                    in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                    time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                    VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                    sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                    preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                    span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                    known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                    changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                    bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                    elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                    wit the present stem)

                    bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                    lē2t-

                    bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                    22

                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                    But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                    elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                    the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                    Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                    Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                    retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                    elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                    amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                    lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                    haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                    tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                    time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                    been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                    no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                    being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                    The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                    an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                    that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                    discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                    recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                    particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                    of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                    cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                    Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                    strong verbs

                    The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                    such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                    23

                    change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                    Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                    instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                    been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                    subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                    orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                    Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                    j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                    very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                    class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                    only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                    result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                    such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                    e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                    Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                    (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                    particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                    (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                    long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                    is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                    regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                    generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                    occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                    frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                    Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                    Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                    hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                    adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                    24

                    exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                    of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                    fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                    must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                    minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                    masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                    1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                    shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                    short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                    vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                    substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                    lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                    metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                    syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                    lengthening (1980118)

                    Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                    neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                    affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                    lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                    apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                    vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                    Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                    the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                    be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                    to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                    archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                    phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                    possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                    25

                    phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                    correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                    observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                    study that

                    a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                    order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                    with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                    way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                    1972139)

                    which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                    situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                    required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                    vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                    ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                    was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                    manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                    large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                    period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                    language well into the modern language

                    Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                    trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                    verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                    that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                    analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                    ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                    prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                    how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                    26

                    liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                    eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                    obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                    little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                    the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                    that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                    stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                    correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                    infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                    from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                    is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                    noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                    roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                    root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                    stems was likewise neutralised

                    6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                    61 Introduction

                    As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                    the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                    in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                    Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                    the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                    diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                    Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                    containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                    27

                    which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                    Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                    here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                    contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                    glance

                    The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                    earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                    is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                    has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                    phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                    considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                    gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                    mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                    marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                    a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                    ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                    evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                    vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                    are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                    to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                    monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                    vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                    in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                    In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                    mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                    scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                    (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                    28

                    length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                    2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                    practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                    stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                    similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                    Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                    the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                    potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                    The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                    the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                    scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                    until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                    made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                    Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                    longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                    Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                    solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                    separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                    were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                    make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                    vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                    the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                    parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                    of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                    sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                    just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                    The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                    that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                    29

                    more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                    manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                    because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                    for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                    testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                    small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                    written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                    its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                    like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                    widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                    practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                    harder (which does only rarely occur)

                    In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                    Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                    century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                    has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                    (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                    the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                    used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                    systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                    non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                    extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                    It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                    graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                    Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                    and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                    encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                    etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                    30

                    author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                    cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                    62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                    Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                    in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                    occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                    subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                    For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                    commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                    number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                    desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                    including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                    GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                    abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                    4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                    Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                    Grg)

                    31

                    Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                    237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                    VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                    (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                    heacutet heacutett

                    het

                    3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                    VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                    fexkfecc fecc

                    FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                    GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                    gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                    (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                    gek geck gek

                    HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                    heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                    HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                    VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                    SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                    ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                    3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                    Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                    her (44) her (38) heacuter

                    her (2) her

                    her (3) her (16)

                    her (3) her (2) heacuter

                    her her (3)

                    In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                    once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                    other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                    person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                    overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                    between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                    6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                    32

                    instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                    ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                    accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                    VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                    only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                    15 4to see below)

                    63 Holm perg 15 4to

                    One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                    so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                    about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                    extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                    scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                    orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                    that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                    20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                    hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                    been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                    scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                    popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                    Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                    but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                    several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                    the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                    time span between the writing of its single parts

                    Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                    mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                    33

                    up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                    called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                    manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                    According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                    placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                    of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                    Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                    and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                    times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                    more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                    lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                    of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                    The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                    Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                    others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                    orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                    Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                    a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                    either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                    b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                    lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                    c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                    In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                    lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                    derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                    of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                    historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                    34

                    kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                    development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                    [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                    always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                    manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                    Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                    spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                    would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                    bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                    with some instances of derounding to e

                    bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                    lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                    reported 44 see table above)

                    bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                    far the instances where it is absent

                    bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                    diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                    35

                    Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                    divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                    Weenen (2000)

                    Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                    a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                    feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                    helt heck (3) hek

                    ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                    d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                    62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                    g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                    97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                    heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                    A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                    manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                    (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                    bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                    III)

                    bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                    bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                    bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                    36

                    Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                    Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                    VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                    ecc (3)

                    FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                    GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                    gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                    HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                    hellthelt

                    HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                    VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                    SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                    ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                    ſnere ſneɼe

                    VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                    heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                    heacutet hett het (2) hett

                    ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                    her (25) heacuter haeligr

                    her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                    Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                    ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                    possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                    does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                    preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                    With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                    against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                    given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                    time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                    AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                    received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                    37

                    richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                    when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                    65 NRA 52

                    Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                    the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                    and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                    how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                    very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                    length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                    89)

                    [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                    vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                    akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                    percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                    In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                    are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                    preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                    forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                    towards a distinctively short vowel

                    66 GKS 2087 4to

                    The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                    precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                    38

                    manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                    one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                    continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                    the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                    short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                    class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                    Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                    according to Buergel (1904)

                    Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                    Orthography N of Occurrences

                    VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                    VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                    VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                    HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                    FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                    GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                    VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                    RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                    VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                    Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                    correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                    no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                    39

                    67 AM 519a 4deg

                    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                    accent mark to denote vowel length

                    40

                    68 AM 132 fol

                    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                    an their spelling discussed below)

                    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                    feacutekk fingu fenginn

                    (finginn)

                    falla fell fellu fallinn

                    feacutell feacutellu

                    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                    gingu (gingit)

                    halda helt heldu haldinn

                    heacutelt heacuteldu

                    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                    41

                    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                    (23819)

                    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                    nor accent mark

                    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                    42

                    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                    accent mark

                    69 Summary

                    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                    43

                    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                    language

                    7 Conclusions

                    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                    44

                    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                    of Old English and Old High German

                    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                    place

                    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                    etc)

                    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                    different processes

                    45

                    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                    subclass VIIc preterites)

                    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                    its preterite forms

                    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                    46

                    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                    47

                    8 Bibliography

                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                    48

                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                    109159-178

                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                    Hamburg

                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                    2009

                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                    Heidelberg

                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                    history Word 15 282-312

                    49

                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                    Press Oxford

                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                    2333-47

                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                    50

                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                    Copenhagen

                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                    studie Gleerup Lund

                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                    Society of America Philadelphia

                    51

                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                    University Press Oxford

                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                    (Saale)

                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                    Society of America Washington DC

                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                    Ruprecht

                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                    52

                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                    Lingua 5289-123

                    53

                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                      to two (ie VC and VC) so that all stressed syllables became heavy

                      Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always

                      been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short the low vowels

                      rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of aacute from a

                      central to a back position after the disappearance of ǫ)3 The abandonment

                      of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the Icelandic

                      Quantity Shift (Icel hljoacuteethvalarbreytingin) stretching at least from the 13th to

                      the 16th century (cf Bjoumlrn K THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Aacuternason 1980121ff and

                      2005332ff) Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a

                      languages vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new

                      diphthongs which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see

                      for instance Haugen 198224ff on Scandinavian and Prokosch 1939107)

                      The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a

                      new in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels

                      rather than between long and short vowels by means of a glide added to the

                      former long vowels coming to constitute the reshaped second mora To the

                      front vowels the front semi-vowel i was added (aelig [aelig] gt [aeligi] gt [ai])

                      while a back semi-vowel u was added to the back vowels (aacute [a] gt [au])

                      As early as in the 13th century however the new realisation of eacute [ei]4 came

                      to be confused with the older diphthong ei (eg in minimal pairs such as

                      meir and meacuter) so that the process was soon reversed to [ie] (cf Hreinn

                      3 The issue is in fact still open to question and it is not to be excluded that the merger of aacute and ǫ may have resulted in a round vowel not affecting its backnessfrontness

                      4 Others explain ei as dialectical as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland (Noreen 192395) However considering that all new diphthongs are descending with [je] being the only exception the descending [ei] could have well been its predecessor Unclear is the development of aelig into [ai] if the early spelling ltiaeliggt reflects an ascending diphthong the phoneme might have undergone the opposite change ie from ascending to descending But again that might be a regional variant from Northern Iceland and in part Breiethafjoumlrethur (Aacuternason 2005333)

                      9

                      Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

                      glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

                      was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

                      the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

                      proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

                      the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

                      constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

                      former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

                      separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

                      (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

                      point on lost any bimoric manifestation

                      Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

                      UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

                      front back front back

                      High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

                      Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

                      Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

                      Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

                      considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

                      by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

                      changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

                      that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

                      always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

                      written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

                      data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

                      length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

                      century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

                      10

                      Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                      quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                      segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                      syllablerdquo

                      3 On Reduplication

                      Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                      to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                      expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                      characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                      special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                      accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                      European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                      further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                      once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                      there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                      relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                      morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                      history of the Germanic languages

                      The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                      and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                      alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                      stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                      that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                      accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                      voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                      instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                      11

                      (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                      gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                      number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                      subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                      example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                      alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                      Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                      The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                      Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                      clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                      fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                      it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                      does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                      from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                      Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                      are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                      expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                      While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                      contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                      simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                      were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                      as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                      retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                      Germanic

                      blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                      12

                      lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                      Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                      are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                      probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                      kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                      considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                      within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                      unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                      subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                      short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                      former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                      as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                      root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                      Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                      reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                      The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                      now summarised as follows

                      a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                      preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                      5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                      13

                      b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                      and consequently

                      c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                      the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                      d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                      of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                      vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                      migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                      e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                      which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                      but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                      easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                      f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                      languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                      subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                      bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                      according to the VIIb alternation)

                      The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                      reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                      long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                      even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                      often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                      subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                      subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                      after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                      they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                      has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                      structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                      14

                      a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                      CeiC

                      b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                      resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                      assimilated

                      c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                      vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                      e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                      Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                      and Old Frisian

                      An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                      Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                      Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                      Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                      ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                      held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                      felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                      fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                      hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                      gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                      fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                      Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                      later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                      problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                      that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                      As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                      15

                      type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                      the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                      productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                      High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                      in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                      VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                      39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                      Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                      Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                      to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                      diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                      definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                      Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                      system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                      Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                      option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                      diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                      VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                      Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                      Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                      Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                      fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                      is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                      starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                      ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                      Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                      be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                      Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                      16

                      1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                      been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                      of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                      no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                      order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                      way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                      preterites will be examined more specifically

                      4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                      Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                      times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                      of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                      following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                      a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                      b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                      Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                      and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                      root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                      analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                      vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                      lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                      vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                      diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                      whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                      17

                      syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                      underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                      Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                      a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                      verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                      common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                      lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                      door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                      An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                      phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                      Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                      especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                      is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                      in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                      developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                      (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                      originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                      later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                      by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                      in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                      ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                      alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                      Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                      a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                      especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                      preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                      18

                      However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                      phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                      reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                      Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                      vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                      agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                      those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                      infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                      Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                      formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                      Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                      Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                      having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                      produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                      new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                      as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                      ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                      developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                      actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                      that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                      discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                      Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                      North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                      diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                      gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                      the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                      from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                      19

                      Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                      (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                      reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                      generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                      syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                      opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                      lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                      subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                      that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                      syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                      Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                      notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                      ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                      established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                      that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                      and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                      that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                      restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                      Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                      ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                      monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                      plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                      alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                      noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                      place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                      syllable however

                      20

                      5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                      Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                      Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                      short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                      ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                      ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                      quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                      noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                      that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                      the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                      P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                      and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                      borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                      substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                      vowel in Germanic

                      According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                      distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                      derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                      instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                      to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                      assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                      is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                      loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                      innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                      The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                      does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                      21

                      inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                      own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                      Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                      (199134)

                      According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                      present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                      some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                      however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                      when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                      occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                      possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                      Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                      This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                      in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                      time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                      VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                      sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                      preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                      span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                      known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                      changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                      bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                      elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                      wit the present stem)

                      bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                      lē2t-

                      bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                      22

                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                      But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                      elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                      the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                      Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                      Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                      retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                      elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                      amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                      lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                      haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                      tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                      time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                      been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                      no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                      being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                      The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                      an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                      that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                      discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                      recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                      particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                      of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                      cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                      Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                      strong verbs

                      The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                      such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                      23

                      change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                      Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                      instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                      been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                      subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                      orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                      Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                      j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                      very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                      class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                      only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                      result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                      such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                      e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                      Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                      (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                      particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                      (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                      long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                      is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                      regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                      generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                      occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                      frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                      Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                      Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                      hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                      adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                      24

                      exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                      of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                      fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                      must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                      minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                      masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                      1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                      shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                      short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                      vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                      substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                      lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                      metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                      syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                      lengthening (1980118)

                      Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                      neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                      affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                      lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                      apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                      vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                      Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                      the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                      be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                      to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                      archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                      phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                      possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                      25

                      phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                      correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                      observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                      study that

                      a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                      order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                      with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                      way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                      1972139)

                      which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                      situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                      required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                      vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                      ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                      was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                      manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                      large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                      period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                      language well into the modern language

                      Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                      trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                      verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                      that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                      analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                      ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                      prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                      how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                      26

                      liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                      eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                      obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                      little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                      the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                      that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                      stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                      correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                      infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                      from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                      is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                      noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                      roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                      root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                      stems was likewise neutralised

                      6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                      61 Introduction

                      As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                      the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                      in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                      Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                      the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                      diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                      Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                      containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                      27

                      which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                      Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                      here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                      contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                      glance

                      The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                      earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                      is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                      has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                      phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                      considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                      gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                      mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                      marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                      a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                      ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                      evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                      vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                      are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                      to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                      monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                      vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                      in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                      In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                      mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                      scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                      (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                      28

                      length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                      2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                      practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                      stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                      similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                      Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                      the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                      potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                      The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                      the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                      scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                      until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                      made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                      Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                      longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                      Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                      solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                      separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                      were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                      make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                      vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                      the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                      parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                      of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                      sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                      just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                      The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                      that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                      29

                      more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                      manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                      because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                      for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                      testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                      small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                      written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                      its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                      like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                      widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                      practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                      harder (which does only rarely occur)

                      In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                      Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                      century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                      has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                      (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                      the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                      used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                      systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                      non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                      extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                      It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                      graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                      Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                      and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                      encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                      etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                      30

                      author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                      cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                      62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                      Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                      in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                      occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                      subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                      For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                      commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                      number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                      desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                      including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                      GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                      abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                      4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                      Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                      Grg)

                      31

                      Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                      237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                      VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                      (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                      heacutet heacutett

                      het

                      3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                      VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                      fexkfecc fecc

                      FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                      GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                      gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                      (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                      gek geck gek

                      HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                      heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                      HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                      VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                      SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                      ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                      3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                      Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                      her (44) her (38) heacuter

                      her (2) her

                      her (3) her (16)

                      her (3) her (2) heacuter

                      her her (3)

                      In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                      once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                      other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                      person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                      overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                      between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                      6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                      32

                      instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                      ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                      accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                      VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                      only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                      15 4to see below)

                      63 Holm perg 15 4to

                      One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                      so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                      about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                      extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                      scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                      orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                      that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                      20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                      hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                      been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                      scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                      popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                      Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                      but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                      several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                      the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                      time span between the writing of its single parts

                      Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                      mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                      33

                      up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                      called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                      manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                      According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                      placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                      of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                      Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                      and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                      times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                      more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                      lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                      of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                      The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                      Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                      others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                      orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                      Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                      a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                      either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                      b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                      lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                      c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                      In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                      lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                      derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                      of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                      historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                      34

                      kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                      development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                      [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                      always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                      manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                      Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                      spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                      would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                      bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                      with some instances of derounding to e

                      bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                      lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                      reported 44 see table above)

                      bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                      far the instances where it is absent

                      bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                      diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                      35

                      Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                      divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                      Weenen (2000)

                      Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                      a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                      feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                      helt heck (3) hek

                      ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                      d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                      62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                      g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                      97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                      heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                      A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                      manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                      (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                      bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                      III)

                      bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                      bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                      bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                      36

                      Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                      Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                      VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                      ecc (3)

                      FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                      GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                      gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                      HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                      hellthelt

                      HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                      VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                      SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                      ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                      ſnere ſneɼe

                      VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                      heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                      heacutet hett het (2) hett

                      ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                      her (25) heacuter haeligr

                      her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                      Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                      ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                      possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                      does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                      preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                      With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                      against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                      given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                      time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                      AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                      received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                      37

                      richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                      when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                      65 NRA 52

                      Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                      the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                      and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                      how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                      very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                      length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                      89)

                      [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                      vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                      akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                      percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                      In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                      are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                      preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                      forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                      towards a distinctively short vowel

                      66 GKS 2087 4to

                      The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                      precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                      38

                      manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                      one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                      continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                      the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                      short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                      class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                      Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                      according to Buergel (1904)

                      Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                      Orthography N of Occurrences

                      VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                      VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                      VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                      HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                      FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                      GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                      VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                      RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                      VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                      Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                      correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                      no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                      39

                      67 AM 519a 4deg

                      The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                      the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                      Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                      parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                      Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                      which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                      language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                      Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                      Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                      clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                      by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                      spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                      century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                      The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                      appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                      Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                      attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                      instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                      ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                      for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                      79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                      4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                      times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                      accent mark to denote vowel length

                      40

                      68 AM 132 fol

                      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                      an their spelling discussed below)

                      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                      feacutekk fingu fenginn

                      (finginn)

                      falla fell fellu fallinn

                      feacutell feacutellu

                      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                      gingu (gingit)

                      halda helt heldu haldinn

                      heacutelt heacuteldu

                      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                      41

                      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                      (23819)

                      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                      nor accent mark

                      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                      42

                      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                      accent mark

                      69 Summary

                      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                      43

                      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                      language

                      7 Conclusions

                      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                      44

                      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                      of Old English and Old High German

                      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                      place

                      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                      etc)

                      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                      different processes

                      45

                      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                      subclass VIIc preterites)

                      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                      its preterite forms

                      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                      46

                      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                      47

                      8 Bibliography

                      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                      48

                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                      109159-178

                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                      Hamburg

                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                      2009

                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                      Heidelberg

                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                      history Word 15 282-312

                      49

                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                      Press Oxford

                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                      2333-47

                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                      50

                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                      Copenhagen

                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                      studie Gleerup Lund

                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                      Society of America Philadelphia

                      51

                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                      University Press Oxford

                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                      (Saale)

                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                      Society of America Washington DC

                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                      Ruprecht

                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                      52

                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                      Lingua 5289-123

                      53

                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                        Benediktsson 1959298 and Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005333) It follows that the

                        glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well to which it

                        was identical in quantity the result was very close to the original value of

                        the former long vowels [i] ~ [ii] [u] ~ [uu] Although it has never been

                        proposed before in fact it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from

                        the high vowels down to the low vowels implying a reanalysis of the

                        constituents of the two morae (cf Table 5) Down to the modern language

                        former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two

                        separate phonemes (especially [je] as j+e) while the high vowels

                        (including y and yacute which eventually merged with i from a certain

                        point on lost any bimoric manifestation

                        Table 5 The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca 1200-1500)

                        UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

                        front back front back

                        High i y u iacute [ii] uacute [uu] ey

                        Mid e ouml o eacute [ei]gt[ie] oacute [ou] ei

                        Low a aelig [ai] aacute [au] au

                        Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect took a

                        considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and

                        by reflex in the written language The only way to determine how the

                        changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation not forgetting

                        that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent nor do they

                        always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are

                        written in Nevertheless as will be confirmed later in greater details the

                        data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of

                        length as a distinctive feature by quality possibly as early as the 13th

                        century and lasting until the 16th century Garnes (1976198) defines the

                        10

                        Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                        quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                        segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                        syllablerdquo

                        3 On Reduplication

                        Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                        to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                        expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                        characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                        special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                        accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                        European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                        further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                        once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                        there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                        relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                        morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                        history of the Germanic languages

                        The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                        and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                        alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                        stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                        that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                        accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                        voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                        instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                        11

                        (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                        gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                        number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                        subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                        example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                        alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                        Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                        The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                        Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                        clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                        fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                        it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                        does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                        from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                        Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                        are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                        expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                        While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                        contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                        simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                        were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                        as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                        retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                        Germanic

                        blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                        12

                        lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                        Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                        are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                        probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                        kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                        considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                        within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                        unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                        subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                        short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                        former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                        as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                        root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                        Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                        reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                        The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                        now summarised as follows

                        a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                        preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                        5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                        13

                        b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                        and consequently

                        c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                        the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                        d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                        of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                        vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                        migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                        e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                        which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                        but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                        easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                        f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                        languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                        subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                        bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                        according to the VIIb alternation)

                        The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                        reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                        long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                        even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                        often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                        subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                        subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                        after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                        they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                        has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                        structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                        14

                        a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                        CeiC

                        b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                        resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                        assimilated

                        c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                        vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                        e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                        Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                        and Old Frisian

                        An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                        Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                        Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                        Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                        ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                        held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                        felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                        fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                        hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                        gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                        fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                        Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                        later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                        problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                        that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                        As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                        15

                        type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                        the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                        productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                        High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                        in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                        VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                        39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                        Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                        Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                        to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                        diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                        definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                        Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                        system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                        Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                        option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                        diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                        VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                        Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                        Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                        Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                        fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                        is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                        starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                        ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                        Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                        be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                        Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                        16

                        1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                        been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                        of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                        no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                        order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                        way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                        preterites will be examined more specifically

                        4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                        Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                        times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                        of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                        following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                        a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                        b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                        Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                        and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                        root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                        analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                        vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                        lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                        vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                        diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                        whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                        17

                        syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                        underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                        Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                        a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                        verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                        common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                        lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                        door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                        An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                        phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                        Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                        especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                        is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                        in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                        developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                        (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                        originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                        later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                        by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                        in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                        ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                        alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                        Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                        a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                        especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                        preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                        18

                        However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                        phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                        reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                        Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                        vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                        agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                        those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                        infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                        Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                        formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                        Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                        Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                        having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                        produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                        new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                        as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                        ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                        developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                        actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                        that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                        discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                        Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                        North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                        diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                        gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                        the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                        from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                        19

                        Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                        (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                        reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                        generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                        syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                        opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                        lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                        subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                        that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                        syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                        Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                        notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                        ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                        established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                        that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                        and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                        that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                        restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                        Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                        ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                        monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                        plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                        alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                        noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                        place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                        syllable however

                        20

                        5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                        Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                        Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                        short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                        ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                        ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                        quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                        noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                        that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                        the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                        P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                        and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                        borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                        substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                        vowel in Germanic

                        According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                        distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                        derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                        instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                        to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                        assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                        is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                        loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                        innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                        The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                        does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                        21

                        inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                        own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                        Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                        (199134)

                        According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                        present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                        some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                        however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                        when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                        occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                        possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                        Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                        This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                        in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                        time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                        VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                        sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                        preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                        span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                        known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                        changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                        bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                        elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                        wit the present stem)

                        bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                        lē2t-

                        bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                        22

                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                        But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                        elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                        the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                        Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                        Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                        retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                        elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                        amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                        lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                        haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                        tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                        time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                        been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                        no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                        being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                        The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                        an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                        that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                        discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                        recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                        particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                        of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                        cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                        Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                        strong verbs

                        The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                        such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                        23

                        change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                        Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                        instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                        been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                        subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                        orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                        Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                        j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                        very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                        class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                        only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                        result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                        such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                        e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                        Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                        (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                        particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                        (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                        long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                        is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                        regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                        generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                        occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                        frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                        Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                        Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                        hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                        adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                        24

                        exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                        of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                        fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                        must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                        minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                        masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                        1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                        shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                        short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                        vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                        substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                        lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                        metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                        syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                        lengthening (1980118)

                        Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                        neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                        affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                        lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                        apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                        vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                        Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                        the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                        be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                        to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                        archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                        phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                        possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                        25

                        phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                        correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                        observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                        study that

                        a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                        order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                        with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                        way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                        1972139)

                        which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                        situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                        required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                        vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                        ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                        was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                        manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                        large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                        period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                        language well into the modern language

                        Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                        trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                        verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                        that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                        analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                        ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                        prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                        how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                        26

                        liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                        eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                        obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                        little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                        the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                        that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                        stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                        correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                        infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                        from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                        is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                        noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                        roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                        root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                        stems was likewise neutralised

                        6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                        61 Introduction

                        As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                        the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                        in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                        Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                        the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                        diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                        Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                        containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                        27

                        which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                        Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                        here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                        contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                        glance

                        The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                        earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                        is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                        has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                        phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                        considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                        gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                        mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                        marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                        a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                        ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                        evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                        vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                        are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                        to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                        monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                        vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                        in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                        In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                        mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                        scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                        (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                        28

                        length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                        2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                        practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                        stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                        similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                        Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                        the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                        potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                        The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                        the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                        scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                        until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                        made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                        Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                        longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                        Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                        solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                        separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                        were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                        make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                        vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                        the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                        parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                        of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                        sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                        just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                        The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                        that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                        29

                        more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                        manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                        because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                        for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                        testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                        small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                        written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                        its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                        like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                        widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                        practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                        harder (which does only rarely occur)

                        In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                        Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                        century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                        has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                        (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                        the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                        used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                        systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                        non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                        extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                        It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                        graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                        Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                        and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                        encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                        etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                        30

                        author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                        cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                        62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                        Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                        in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                        occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                        subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                        For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                        commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                        number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                        desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                        including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                        GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                        abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                        4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                        Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                        Grg)

                        31

                        Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                        237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                        VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                        (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                        heacutet heacutett

                        het

                        3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                        VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                        fexkfecc fecc

                        FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                        GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                        gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                        (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                        gek geck gek

                        HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                        heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                        HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                        VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                        SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                        ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                        3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                        Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                        her (44) her (38) heacuter

                        her (2) her

                        her (3) her (16)

                        her (3) her (2) heacuter

                        her her (3)

                        In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                        once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                        other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                        person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                        overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                        between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                        6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                        32

                        instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                        ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                        accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                        VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                        only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                        15 4to see below)

                        63 Holm perg 15 4to

                        One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                        so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                        about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                        extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                        scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                        orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                        that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                        20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                        hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                        been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                        scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                        popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                        Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                        but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                        several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                        the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                        time span between the writing of its single parts

                        Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                        mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                        33

                        up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                        called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                        manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                        According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                        placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                        of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                        Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                        and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                        times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                        more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                        lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                        of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                        The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                        Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                        others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                        orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                        Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                        a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                        either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                        b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                        lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                        c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                        In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                        lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                        derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                        of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                        historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                        34

                        kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                        development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                        [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                        always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                        manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                        Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                        spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                        would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                        bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                        with some instances of derounding to e

                        bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                        lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                        reported 44 see table above)

                        bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                        far the instances where it is absent

                        bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                        diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                        35

                        Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                        divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                        Weenen (2000)

                        Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                        a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                        feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                        helt heck (3) hek

                        ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                        d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                        62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                        g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                        97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                        heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                        A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                        manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                        (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                        bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                        III)

                        bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                        bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                        bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                        36

                        Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                        Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                        VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                        ecc (3)

                        FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                        GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                        gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                        HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                        hellthelt

                        HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                        VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                        SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                        ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                        ſnere ſneɼe

                        VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                        heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                        heacutet hett het (2) hett

                        ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                        her (25) heacuter haeligr

                        her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                        Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                        ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                        possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                        does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                        preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                        With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                        against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                        given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                        time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                        AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                        received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                        37

                        richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                        when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                        65 NRA 52

                        Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                        the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                        and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                        how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                        very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                        length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                        89)

                        [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                        vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                        akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                        percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                        In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                        are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                        preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                        forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                        towards a distinctively short vowel

                        66 GKS 2087 4to

                        The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                        precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                        38

                        manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                        one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                        continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                        the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                        short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                        class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                        Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                        according to Buergel (1904)

                        Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                        Orthography N of Occurrences

                        VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                        VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                        VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                        HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                        FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                        GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                        VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                        RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                        VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                        Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                        correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                        no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                        39

                        67 AM 519a 4deg

                        The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                        the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                        Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                        parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                        Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                        which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                        language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                        Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                        Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                        clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                        by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                        spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                        century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                        The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                        appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                        Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                        attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                        instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                        ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                        for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                        79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                        4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                        times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                        accent mark to denote vowel length

                        40

                        68 AM 132 fol

                        The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                        (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                        included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                        as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                        seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                        Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                        and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                        that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                        secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                        an their spelling discussed below)

                        Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                        faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                        feacutekk fingu fenginn

                        (finginn)

                        falla fell fellu fallinn

                        feacutell feacutellu

                        ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                        gingu (gingit)

                        halda helt heldu haldinn

                        heacutelt heacuteldu

                        Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                        notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                        accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                        vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                        other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                        41

                        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                        (23819)

                        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                        nor accent mark

                        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                        42

                        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                        accent mark

                        69 Summary

                        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                        43

                        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                        language

                        7 Conclusions

                        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                        44

                        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                        of Old English and Old High German

                        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                        place

                        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                        etc)

                        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                        different processes

                        45

                        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                        subclass VIIc preterites)

                        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                        its preterite forms

                        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                        46

                        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                        47

                        8 Bibliography

                        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                        48

                        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                        109159-178

                        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                        Hamburg

                        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                        2009

                        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                        Heidelberg

                        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                        history Word 15 282-312

                        49

                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                        Press Oxford

                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                        2333-47

                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                        50

                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                        Copenhagen

                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                        studie Gleerup Lund

                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                        Society of America Philadelphia

                        51

                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                        University Press Oxford

                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                        (Saale)

                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                        Society of America Washington DC

                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                        Ruprecht

                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                        52

                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                        Lingua 5289-123

                        53

                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                          Quantity Shift as ldquoan increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature

                          quantityrdquo meaning that before the shift ldquothe scope of the quantity was the

                          segment whereas in the post-quantity shift period the scope was the

                          syllablerdquo

                          3 On Reduplication

                          Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

                          to form the perfect The perfect denoted a stative aspect meaning that it

                          expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action and was

                          characterised by e-reduplication plus mainly o zero apophony plus

                          special endings partly recalling those of the middle and hysterokinetic

                          accentuation (Jasanoff 200330 and 2007242) Later the Proto-Indo-

                          European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was

                          further specialised to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must

                          once have been reduplicated Later on however except for subclass VIIf

                          there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its

                          relatives making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive

                          morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early

                          history of the Germanic languages

                          The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication

                          and ablaut formerly superimposable features as two concurring

                          alternatives for forming the preterite The reduplicating syllable was not

                          stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect and it is generally assumed

                          that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007191) Because of the

                          accent lying on the root vowel one might expect Verners Law to have

                          voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating sure

                          instances of that are very few (eg ON sera (s)he sowed Go gasaiacutezlep

                          11

                          (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                          gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                          number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                          subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                          example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                          alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                          Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                          The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                          Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                          clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                          fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                          it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                          does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                          from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                          Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                          are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                          expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                          While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                          contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                          simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                          were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                          as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                          retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                          Germanic

                          blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                          12

                          lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                          Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                          are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                          probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                          kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                          considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                          within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                          unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                          subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                          short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                          former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                          as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                          root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                          Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                          reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                          The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                          now summarised as follows

                          a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                          preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                          5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                          13

                          b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                          and consequently

                          c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                          the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                          d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                          of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                          vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                          migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                          e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                          which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                          but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                          easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                          f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                          languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                          subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                          bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                          according to the VIIb alternation)

                          The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                          reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                          long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                          even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                          often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                          subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                          subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                          after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                          they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                          has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                          structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                          14

                          a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                          CeiC

                          b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                          resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                          assimilated

                          c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                          vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                          e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                          Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                          and Old Frisian

                          An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                          Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                          Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                          Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                          ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                          held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                          felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                          fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                          hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                          gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                          fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                          Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                          later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                          problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                          that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                          As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                          15

                          type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                          the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                          productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                          High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                          in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                          VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                          39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                          Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                          Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                          to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                          diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                          definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                          Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                          system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                          Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                          option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                          diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                          VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                          Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                          Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                          Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                          fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                          is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                          starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                          ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                          Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                          be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                          Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                          16

                          1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                          been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                          of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                          no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                          order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                          way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                          preterites will be examined more specifically

                          4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                          Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                          times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                          of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                          following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                          a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                          b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                          Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                          and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                          root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                          analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                          vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                          lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                          vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                          diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                          whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                          17

                          syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                          underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                          Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                          a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                          verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                          common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                          lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                          door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                          An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                          phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                          Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                          especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                          is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                          in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                          developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                          (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                          originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                          later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                          by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                          in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                          ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                          alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                          Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                          a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                          especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                          preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                          18

                          However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                          phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                          reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                          Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                          vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                          agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                          those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                          infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                          Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                          formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                          Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                          Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                          having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                          produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                          new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                          as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                          ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                          developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                          actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                          that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                          discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                          Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                          North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                          diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                          gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                          the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                          from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                          19

                          Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                          (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                          reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                          generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                          syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                          opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                          lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                          subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                          that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                          syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                          Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                          notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                          ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                          established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                          that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                          and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                          that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                          restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                          Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                          ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                          monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                          plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                          alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                          noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                          place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                          syllable however

                          20

                          5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                          Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                          Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                          short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                          ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                          ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                          quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                          noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                          that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                          the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                          P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                          and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                          borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                          substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                          vowel in Germanic

                          According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                          distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                          derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                          instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                          to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                          assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                          is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                          loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                          innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                          The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                          does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                          21

                          inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                          own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                          Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                          (199134)

                          According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                          present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                          some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                          however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                          when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                          occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                          possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                          Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                          This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                          in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                          time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                          VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                          sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                          preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                          span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                          known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                          changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                          bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                          elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                          wit the present stem)

                          bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                          lē2t-

                          bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                          22

                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                          But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                          elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                          the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                          Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                          Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                          retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                          elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                          amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                          lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                          haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                          tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                          time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                          been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                          no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                          being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                          The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                          an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                          that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                          discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                          recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                          particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                          of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                          cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                          Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                          strong verbs

                          The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                          such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                          23

                          change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                          Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                          instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                          been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                          subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                          orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                          Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                          j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                          very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                          class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                          only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                          result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                          such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                          e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                          Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                          (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                          particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                          (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                          long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                          is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                          regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                          generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                          occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                          frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                          Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                          Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                          hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                          adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                          24

                          exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                          of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                          fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                          must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                          minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                          masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                          1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                          shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                          short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                          vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                          substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                          lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                          metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                          syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                          lengthening (1980118)

                          Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                          neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                          affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                          lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                          apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                          vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                          Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                          the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                          be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                          to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                          archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                          phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                          possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                          25

                          phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                          correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                          observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                          study that

                          a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                          order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                          with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                          way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                          1972139)

                          which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                          situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                          required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                          vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                          ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                          was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                          manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                          large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                          period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                          language well into the modern language

                          Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                          trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                          verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                          that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                          analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                          ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                          prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                          how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                          26

                          liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                          eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                          obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                          little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                          the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                          that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                          stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                          correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                          infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                          from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                          is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                          noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                          roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                          root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                          stems was likewise neutralised

                          6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                          61 Introduction

                          As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                          the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                          in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                          Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                          the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                          diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                          Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                          containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                          27

                          which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                          Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                          here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                          contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                          glance

                          The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                          earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                          is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                          has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                          phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                          considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                          gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                          mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                          marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                          a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                          ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                          evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                          vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                          are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                          to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                          monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                          vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                          in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                          In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                          mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                          scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                          (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                          28

                          length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                          2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                          practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                          stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                          similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                          Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                          the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                          potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                          The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                          the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                          scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                          until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                          made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                          Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                          longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                          Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                          solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                          separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                          were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                          make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                          vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                          the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                          parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                          of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                          sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                          just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                          The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                          that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                          29

                          more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                          manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                          because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                          for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                          testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                          small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                          written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                          its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                          like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                          widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                          practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                          harder (which does only rarely occur)

                          In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                          Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                          century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                          has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                          (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                          the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                          used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                          systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                          non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                          extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                          It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                          graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                          Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                          and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                          encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                          etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                          30

                          author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                          cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                          62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                          Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                          in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                          occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                          subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                          For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                          commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                          number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                          desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                          including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                          GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                          abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                          4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                          Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                          Grg)

                          31

                          Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                          237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                          VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                          (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                          heacutet heacutett

                          het

                          3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                          VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                          fexkfecc fecc

                          FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                          GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                          gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                          (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                          gek geck gek

                          HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                          heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                          HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                          VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                          SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                          ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                          3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                          Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                          her (44) her (38) heacuter

                          her (2) her

                          her (3) her (16)

                          her (3) her (2) heacuter

                          her her (3)

                          In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                          once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                          other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                          person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                          overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                          between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                          6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                          32

                          instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                          ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                          accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                          VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                          only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                          15 4to see below)

                          63 Holm perg 15 4to

                          One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                          so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                          about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                          extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                          scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                          orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                          that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                          20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                          hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                          been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                          scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                          popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                          Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                          but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                          several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                          the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                          time span between the writing of its single parts

                          Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                          mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                          33

                          up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                          called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                          manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                          According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                          placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                          of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                          Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                          and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                          times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                          more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                          lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                          of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                          The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                          Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                          others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                          orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                          Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                          a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                          either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                          b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                          lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                          c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                          In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                          lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                          derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                          of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                          historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                          34

                          kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                          development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                          [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                          always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                          manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                          Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                          spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                          would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                          bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                          with some instances of derounding to e

                          bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                          lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                          reported 44 see table above)

                          bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                          far the instances where it is absent

                          bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                          diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                          35

                          Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                          divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                          Weenen (2000)

                          Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                          a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                          feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                          helt heck (3) hek

                          ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                          d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                          62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                          g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                          97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                          heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                          64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                          A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                          manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                          (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                          bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                          III)

                          bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                          bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                          bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                          36

                          Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                          Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                          VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                          ecc (3)

                          FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                          GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                          gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                          HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                          hellthelt

                          HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                          VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                          SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                          ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                          ſnere ſneɼe

                          VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                          heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                          heacutet hett het (2) hett

                          ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                          her (25) heacuter haeligr

                          her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                          Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                          ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                          possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                          does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                          preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                          With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                          against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                          given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                          time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                          AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                          received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                          37

                          richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                          when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                          65 NRA 52

                          Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                          the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                          and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                          how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                          very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                          length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                          89)

                          [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                          vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                          akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                          percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                          In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                          are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                          preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                          forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                          towards a distinctively short vowel

                          66 GKS 2087 4to

                          The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                          precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                          38

                          manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                          one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                          continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                          the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                          short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                          class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                          Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                          according to Buergel (1904)

                          Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                          Orthography N of Occurrences

                          VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                          VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                          VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                          HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                          FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                          GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                          VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                          RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                          VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                          Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                          correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                          no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                          39

                          67 AM 519a 4deg

                          The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                          the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                          Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                          parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                          Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                          which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                          language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                          Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                          Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                          clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                          by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                          spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                          century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                          The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                          appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                          Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                          attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                          instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                          ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                          for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                          79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                          4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                          times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                          accent mark to denote vowel length

                          40

                          68 AM 132 fol

                          The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                          (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                          included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                          as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                          seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                          Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                          and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                          that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                          secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                          an their spelling discussed below)

                          Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                          faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                          feacutekk fingu fenginn

                          (finginn)

                          falla fell fellu fallinn

                          feacutell feacutellu

                          ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                          gingu (gingit)

                          halda helt heldu haldinn

                          heacutelt heacuteldu

                          Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                          notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                          accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                          vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                          other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                          41

                          are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                          ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                          Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                          ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                          Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                          Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                          occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                          (23819)

                          But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                          diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                          halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                          preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                          without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                          times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                          neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                          [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                          preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                          times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                          an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                          nor accent mark

                          Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                          diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                          hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                          do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                          expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                          here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                          heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                          42

                          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                          accent mark

                          69 Summary

                          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                          43

                          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                          language

                          7 Conclusions

                          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                          44

                          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                          of Old English and Old High German

                          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                          place

                          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                          etc)

                          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                          different processes

                          45

                          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                          subclass VIIc preterites)

                          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                          its preterite forms

                          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                          46

                          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                          47

                          8 Bibliography

                          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                          48

                          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                          109159-178

                          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                          Hamburg

                          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                          2009

                          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                          Heidelberg

                          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                          history Word 15 282-312

                          49

                          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                          Press Oxford

                          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                          2333-47

                          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                          50

                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                          Copenhagen

                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                          studie Gleerup Lund

                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                          Society of America Philadelphia

                          51

                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                          University Press Oxford

                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                          (Saale)

                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                          Society of America Washington DC

                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                          Ruprecht

                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                          52

                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                          Lingua 5289-123

                          53

                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                            (s)he had fallen asleep) but of a particular relevance since their reanalysis

                            gave rise to a -Vr- infix which according to some was extended to a good

                            number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to

                            subclass VIIf) and Old High German Since the voicing s gt z is the only

                            example of Verners Law in class VII verbs it may be concluded that other

                            alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-

                            Germanic (Ringe 2007191-192)

                            The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

                            Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters Obstruent + sonorant

                            clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf slepan ~ saiacuteslep

                            fraisan ~ faiacutefrais) while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies

                            it medially (cf ON grera OE -dreord OHG pleruzzun) However Gothic

                            does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation Gothic innovates

                            from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects a) neutralisation of Verners

                            Laws effects (with few exceptions) b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms

                            are levelled in favour of the singular and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the

                            expense of -i- (cf Jasanoff 2007244)

                            While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by

                            contraction with the reduplicating syllable there is a subgroup which may

                            simply have dropped it The reason for this development was that the roots

                            were already ablauting so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant

                            as a mark for the past tense There are at least eight such verbs which

                            retained both reduplication and ablaut possibly until a late stage in Proto-

                            Germanic

                            blēsaną blow ~ beblōsgrētaną weep ~ gegrōt hwētaną push continuously ~ hehwōt

                            12

                            lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                            Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                            are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                            probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                            kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                            considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                            within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                            unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                            subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                            short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                            former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                            as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                            root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                            Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                            reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                            The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                            now summarised as follows

                            a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                            preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                            5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                            13

                            b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                            and consequently

                            c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                            the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                            d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                            of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                            vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                            migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                            e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                            which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                            but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                            easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                            f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                            languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                            subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                            bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                            according to the VIIb alternation)

                            The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                            reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                            long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                            even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                            often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                            subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                            subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                            after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                            they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                            has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                            structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                            14

                            a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                            CeiC

                            b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                            resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                            assimilated

                            c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                            vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                            e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                            Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                            and Old Frisian

                            An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                            Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                            Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                            Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                            ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                            held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                            felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                            fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                            hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                            gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                            fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                            Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                            later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                            problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                            that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                            As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                            15

                            type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                            the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                            productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                            High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                            in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                            VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                            39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                            Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                            Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                            to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                            diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                            definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                            Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                            system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                            Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                            option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                            diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                            VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                            Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                            Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                            Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                            fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                            is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                            starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                            ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                            Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                            be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                            Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                            16

                            1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                            been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                            of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                            no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                            order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                            way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                            preterites will be examined more specifically

                            4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                            Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                            times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                            of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                            following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                            a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                            b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                            Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                            and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                            root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                            analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                            vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                            lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                            vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                            diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                            whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                            17

                            syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                            underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                            Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                            a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                            verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                            common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                            lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                            door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                            An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                            phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                            Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                            especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                            is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                            in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                            developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                            (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                            originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                            later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                            by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                            in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                            ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                            alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                            Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                            a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                            especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                            preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                            18

                            However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                            phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                            reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                            Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                            vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                            agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                            those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                            infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                            Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                            formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                            Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                            Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                            having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                            produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                            new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                            as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                            ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                            developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                            actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                            that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                            discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                            Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                            North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                            diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                            gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                            the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                            from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                            19

                            Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                            (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                            reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                            generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                            syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                            opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                            lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                            subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                            that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                            syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                            Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                            notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                            ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                            established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                            that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                            and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                            that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                            restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                            Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                            ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                            monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                            plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                            alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                            noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                            place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                            syllable however

                            20

                            5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                            Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                            Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                            short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                            ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                            ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                            quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                            noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                            that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                            the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                            P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                            and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                            borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                            substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                            vowel in Germanic

                            According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                            distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                            derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                            instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                            to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                            assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                            is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                            loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                            innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                            The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                            does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                            21

                            inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                            own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                            Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                            (199134)

                            According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                            present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                            some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                            however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                            when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                            occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                            possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                            Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                            This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                            in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                            time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                            VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                            sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                            preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                            span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                            known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                            changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                            bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                            elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                            wit the present stem)

                            bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                            lē2t-

                            bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                            22

                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                            But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                            elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                            the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                            Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                            Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                            retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                            elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                            amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                            lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                            haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                            tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                            time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                            been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                            no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                            being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                            The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                            an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                            that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                            discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                            recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                            particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                            of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                            cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                            Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                            strong verbs

                            The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                            such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                            23

                            change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                            Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                            instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                            been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                            subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                            orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                            Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                            j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                            very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                            class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                            only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                            result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                            such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                            e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                            Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                            (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                            particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                            (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                            long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                            is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                            regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                            generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                            occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                            frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                            Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                            Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                            hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                            adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                            24

                            exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                            of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                            fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                            must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                            minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                            masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                            1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                            shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                            short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                            vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                            substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                            lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                            metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                            syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                            lengthening (1980118)

                            Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                            neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                            affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                            lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                            apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                            vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                            Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                            the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                            be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                            to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                            archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                            phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                            possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                            25

                            phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                            correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                            observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                            study that

                            a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                            order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                            with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                            way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                            1972139)

                            which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                            situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                            required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                            vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                            ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                            was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                            manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                            large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                            period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                            language well into the modern language

                            Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                            trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                            verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                            that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                            analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                            ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                            prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                            how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                            26

                            liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                            eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                            obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                            little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                            the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                            that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                            stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                            correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                            infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                            from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                            is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                            noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                            roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                            root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                            stems was likewise neutralised

                            6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                            61 Introduction

                            As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                            the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                            in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                            Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                            the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                            diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                            Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                            containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                            27

                            which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                            Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                            here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                            contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                            glance

                            The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                            earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                            is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                            has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                            phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                            considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                            gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                            mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                            marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                            a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                            ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                            evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                            vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                            are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                            to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                            monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                            vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                            in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                            In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                            mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                            scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                            (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                            28

                            length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                            2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                            practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                            stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                            similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                            Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                            the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                            potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                            The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                            the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                            scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                            until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                            made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                            Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                            longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                            Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                            solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                            separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                            were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                            make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                            vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                            the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                            parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                            of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                            sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                            just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                            The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                            that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                            29

                            more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                            manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                            because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                            for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                            testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                            small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                            written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                            its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                            like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                            widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                            practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                            harder (which does only rarely occur)

                            In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                            Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                            century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                            has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                            (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                            the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                            used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                            systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                            non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                            extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                            It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                            graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                            Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                            and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                            encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                            etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                            30

                            author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                            cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                            62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                            Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                            in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                            occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                            subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                            For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                            commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                            number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                            desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                            including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                            GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                            abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                            4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                            Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                            Grg)

                            31

                            Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                            237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                            VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                            (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                            heacutet heacutett

                            het

                            3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                            VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                            fexkfecc fecc

                            FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                            GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                            gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                            (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                            gek geck gek

                            HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                            heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                            HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                            VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                            SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                            ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                            3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                            Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                            her (44) her (38) heacuter

                            her (2) her

                            her (3) her (16)

                            her (3) her (2) heacuter

                            her her (3)

                            In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                            once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                            other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                            person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                            overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                            between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                            6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                            32

                            instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                            ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                            accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                            VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                            only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                            15 4to see below)

                            63 Holm perg 15 4to

                            One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                            so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                            about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                            extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                            scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                            orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                            that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                            20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                            hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                            been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                            scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                            popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                            Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                            but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                            several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                            the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                            time span between the writing of its single parts

                            Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                            mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                            33

                            up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                            called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                            manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                            According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                            placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                            of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                            Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                            and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                            times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                            more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                            lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                            of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                            The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                            Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                            others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                            orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                            Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                            a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                            either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                            b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                            lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                            c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                            In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                            lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                            derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                            of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                            historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                            34

                            kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                            development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                            [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                            always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                            manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                            Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                            spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                            would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                            bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                            with some instances of derounding to e

                            bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                            lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                            reported 44 see table above)

                            bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                            far the instances where it is absent

                            bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                            diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                            35

                            Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                            divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                            Weenen (2000)

                            Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                            a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                            feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                            helt heck (3) hek

                            ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                            d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                            62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                            g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                            97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                            heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                            64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                            A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                            manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                            (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                            bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                            III)

                            bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                            bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                            bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                            36

                            Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                            Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                            VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                            ecc (3)

                            FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                            GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                            gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                            HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                            hellthelt

                            HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                            VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                            SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                            ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                            ſnere ſneɼe

                            VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                            heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                            heacutet hett het (2) hett

                            ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                            her (25) heacuter haeligr

                            her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                            Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                            ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                            possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                            does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                            preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                            With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                            against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                            given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                            time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                            AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                            received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                            37

                            richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                            when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                            65 NRA 52

                            Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                            the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                            and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                            how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                            very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                            length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                            89)

                            [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                            vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                            akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                            percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                            In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                            are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                            preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                            forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                            towards a distinctively short vowel

                            66 GKS 2087 4to

                            The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                            precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                            38

                            manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                            one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                            continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                            the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                            short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                            class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                            Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                            according to Buergel (1904)

                            Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                            Orthography N of Occurrences

                            VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                            VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                            VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                            HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                            FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                            GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                            VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                            RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                            VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                            Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                            correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                            no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                            39

                            67 AM 519a 4deg

                            The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                            the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                            Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                            parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                            Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                            which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                            language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                            Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                            Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                            clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                            by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                            spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                            century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                            The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                            appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                            Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                            attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                            instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                            ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                            for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                            79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                            4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                            times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                            accent mark to denote vowel length

                            40

                            68 AM 132 fol

                            The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                            (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                            included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                            as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                            seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                            Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                            and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                            that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                            secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                            an their spelling discussed below)

                            Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                            faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                            feacutekk fingu fenginn

                            (finginn)

                            falla fell fellu fallinn

                            feacutell feacutellu

                            ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                            gingu (gingit)

                            halda helt heldu haldinn

                            heacutelt heacuteldu

                            Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                            notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                            accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                            vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                            other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                            41

                            are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                            ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                            Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                            ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                            Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                            Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                            occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                            (23819)

                            But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                            diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                            halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                            preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                            without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                            times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                            neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                            [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                            preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                            times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                            an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                            nor accent mark

                            Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                            diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                            hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                            do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                            expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                            here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                            heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                            42

                            the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                            accent mark

                            69 Summary

                            To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                            texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                            short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                            similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                            largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                            characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                            in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                            in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                            subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                            has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                            the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                            of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                            Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                            always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                            the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                            diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                            as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                            short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                            (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                            with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                            only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                            will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                            reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                            43

                            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                            language

                            7 Conclusions

                            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                            44

                            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                            of Old English and Old High German

                            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                            place

                            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                            etc)

                            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                            different processes

                            45

                            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                            subclass VIIc preterites)

                            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                            its preterite forms

                            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                            46

                            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                            47

                            8 Bibliography

                            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                            48

                            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                            109159-178

                            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                            Hamburg

                            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                            2009

                            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                            Heidelberg

                            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                            history Word 15 282-312

                            49

                            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                            Press Oxford

                            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                            2333-47

                            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                            50

                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                            Leiden University Press Leiden

                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                            Copenhagen

                            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                            studie Gleerup Lund

                            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                            Society of America Philadelphia

                            51

                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                            University Press Oxford

                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                            (Saale)

                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                            Society of America Washington DC

                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                            Ruprecht

                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                            52

                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                            Lingua 5289-123

                            53

                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                              lētaną let ~ lelōt letrēdaną rule~ rerōd ruletēkaną take ~ tetōk takesēaną sow ~ sezōwēaną blow (of wind) ~ wewō

                              Ringe (2007250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal ē which

                              are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree Some of those did

                              probably not ablaut like slēpaną ~ sezlēp Only two of these verbs surely

                              kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered In Old Norse a

                              considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated

                              within class VII wēaną fell out of use sēaną remained basically

                              unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting rōaną to form

                              subclass VIIf tēkaną and hwētaną which meanwhile both developed a

                              short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka became the

                              former a simple class VI strong verb as to hwētaną it apparently surfaces

                              as a weak verb5 Last but not least the remaining preterites changed their

                              root vocalism from ō to ē but not without leaving traces in Old

                              Swedish loacutet and of course sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a

                              reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007249)

                              The developments which led to the new VII class of strong verbs can be

                              now summarised as follows

                              a) rise of a new generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

                              preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa VIId and VIIe

                              5 The attestation of hwētaną is problematic It is found both as the weak verbs hvata and hvota in Old Icelandic where hvota (seemingly from hvaacuteta) seems to regularly derive from hwētaną and is probably related to the other weak verb hoacuteta (to hold forth with threatening gestures) which probably merged with older hǿta (to threaten) the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf Ringe 2007249 CleasbyVigfuacutesson 1957297 and 281)

                              13

                              b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                              and consequently

                              c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                              the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                              d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                              of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                              vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                              migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                              e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                              which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                              but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                              easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                              f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                              languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                              subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                              bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                              according to the VIIb alternation)

                              The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                              reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                              long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                              even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                              often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                              subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                              subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                              after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                              they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                              has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                              structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                              14

                              a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                              CeiC

                              b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                              resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                              assimilated

                              c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                              vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                              e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                              Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                              and Old Frisian

                              An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                              Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                              Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                              Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                              ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                              held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                              felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                              fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                              hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                              gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                              fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                              Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                              later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                              problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                              that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                              As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                              15

                              type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                              the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                              productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                              High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                              in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                              VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                              39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                              Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                              Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                              to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                              diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                              definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                              Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                              system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                              Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                              option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                              diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                              VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                              Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                              Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                              Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                              fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                              is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                              starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                              ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                              Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                              be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                              Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                              16

                              1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                              been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                              of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                              no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                              order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                              way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                              preterites will be examined more specifically

                              4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                              Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                              times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                              of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                              following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                              a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                              b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                              Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                              and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                              root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                              analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                              vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                              lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                              vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                              diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                              whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                              17

                              syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                              underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                              Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                              a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                              verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                              common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                              lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                              door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                              An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                              phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                              Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                              especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                              is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                              in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                              developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                              (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                              originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                              later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                              by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                              in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                              ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                              alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                              Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                              a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                              especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                              preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                              18

                              However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                              phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                              reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                              Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                              vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                              agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                              those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                              infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                              Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                              formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                              Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                              Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                              having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                              produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                              new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                              as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                              ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                              developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                              actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                              that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                              discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                              Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                              North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                              diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                              gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                              the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                              from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                              19

                              Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                              (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                              reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                              generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                              syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                              opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                              lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                              subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                              that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                              syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                              Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                              notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                              ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                              established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                              that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                              and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                              that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                              restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                              Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                              ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                              monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                              plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                              alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                              noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                              place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                              syllable however

                              20

                              5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                              Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                              Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                              short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                              ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                              ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                              quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                              noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                              that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                              the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                              P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                              and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                              borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                              substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                              vowel in Germanic

                              According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                              distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                              derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                              instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                              to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                              assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                              is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                              loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                              innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                              The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                              does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                              21

                              inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                              own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                              Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                              (199134)

                              According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                              present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                              some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                              however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                              when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                              occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                              possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                              Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                              This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                              in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                              time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                              VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                              sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                              preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                              span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                              known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                              changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                              bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                              elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                              wit the present stem)

                              bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                              lē2t-

                              bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                              22

                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                              But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                              elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                              the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                              Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                              Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                              retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                              elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                              amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                              lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                              haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                              tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                              time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                              been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                              no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                              being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                              The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                              an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                              that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                              discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                              recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                              particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                              of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                              cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                              Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                              strong verbs

                              The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                              such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                              23

                              change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                              Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                              instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                              been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                              subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                              orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                              Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                              j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                              very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                              class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                              only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                              result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                              such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                              e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                              Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                              (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                              particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                              (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                              long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                              is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                              regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                              generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                              occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                              frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                              Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                              Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                              hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                              adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                              24

                              exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                              of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                              fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                              must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                              minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                              masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                              1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                              shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                              short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                              vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                              substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                              lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                              metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                              syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                              lengthening (1980118)

                              Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                              neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                              affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                              lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                              apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                              vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                              Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                              the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                              be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                              to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                              archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                              phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                              possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                              25

                              phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                              correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                              observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                              study that

                              a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                              order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                              with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                              way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                              1972139)

                              which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                              situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                              required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                              vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                              ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                              was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                              manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                              large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                              period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                              language well into the modern language

                              Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                              trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                              verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                              that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                              analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                              ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                              prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                              how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                              26

                              liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                              eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                              obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                              little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                              the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                              that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                              stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                              correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                              infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                              from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                              is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                              noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                              roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                              root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                              stems was likewise neutralised

                              6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                              61 Introduction

                              As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                              the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                              in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                              Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                              the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                              diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                              Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                              containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                              27

                              which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                              Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                              here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                              contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                              glance

                              The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                              earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                              is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                              has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                              phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                              considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                              gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                              mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                              marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                              a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                              ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                              evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                              vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                              are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                              to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                              monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                              vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                              in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                              In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                              mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                              scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                              (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                              28

                              length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                              2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                              practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                              stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                              similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                              Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                              the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                              potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                              The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                              the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                              scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                              until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                              made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                              Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                              longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                              Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                              solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                              separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                              were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                              make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                              vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                              the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                              parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                              of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                              sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                              just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                              The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                              that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                              29

                              more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                              manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                              because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                              for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                              testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                              small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                              written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                              its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                              like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                              widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                              practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                              harder (which does only rarely occur)

                              In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                              Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                              century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                              has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                              (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                              the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                              used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                              systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                              non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                              extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                              It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                              graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                              Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                              and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                              encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                              etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                              30

                              author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                              cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                              62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                              Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                              in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                              occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                              subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                              For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                              commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                              number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                              desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                              including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                              GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                              abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                              4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                              Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                              Grg)

                              31

                              Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                              237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                              VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                              (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                              heacutet heacutett

                              het

                              3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                              VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                              fexkfecc fecc

                              FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                              GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                              gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                              (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                              gek geck gek

                              HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                              heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                              HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                              VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                              SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                              ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                              3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                              Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                              her (44) her (38) heacuter

                              her (2) her

                              her (3) her (16)

                              her (3) her (2) heacuter

                              her her (3)

                              In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                              once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                              other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                              person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                              overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                              between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                              6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                              32

                              instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                              ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                              accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                              VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                              only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                              15 4to see below)

                              63 Holm perg 15 4to

                              One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                              so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                              about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                              extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                              scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                              orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                              that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                              20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                              hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                              been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                              scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                              popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                              Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                              but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                              several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                              the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                              time span between the writing of its single parts

                              Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                              mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                              33

                              up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                              called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                              manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                              According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                              placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                              of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                              Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                              and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                              times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                              more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                              lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                              of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                              The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                              Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                              others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                              orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                              Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                              a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                              either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                              b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                              lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                              c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                              In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                              lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                              derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                              of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                              historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                              34

                              kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                              development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                              [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                              always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                              manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                              Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                              spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                              would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                              bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                              with some instances of derounding to e

                              bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                              lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                              reported 44 see table above)

                              bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                              far the instances where it is absent

                              bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                              diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                              35

                              Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                              divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                              Weenen (2000)

                              Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                              a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                              feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                              helt heck (3) hek

                              ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                              d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                              62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                              g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                              97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                              heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                              64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                              A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                              manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                              (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                              bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                              III)

                              bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                              bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                              bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                              36

                              Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                              Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                              VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                              ecc (3)

                              FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                              GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                              gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                              HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                              hellthelt

                              HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                              VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                              SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                              ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                              ſnere ſneɼe

                              VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                              heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                              heacutet hett het (2) hett

                              ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                              her (25) heacuter haeligr

                              her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                              Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                              ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                              possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                              does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                              preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                              With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                              against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                              given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                              time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                              AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                              received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                              37

                              richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                              when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                              65 NRA 52

                              Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                              the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                              and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                              how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                              very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                              length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                              89)

                              [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                              vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                              akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                              percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                              In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                              are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                              preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                              forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                              towards a distinctively short vowel

                              66 GKS 2087 4to

                              The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                              precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                              38

                              manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                              one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                              continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                              the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                              short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                              class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                              Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                              according to Buergel (1904)

                              Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                              Orthography N of Occurrences

                              VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                              VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                              VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                              HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                              FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                              GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                              VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                              RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                              VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                              Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                              correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                              no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                              39

                              67 AM 519a 4deg

                              The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                              the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                              Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                              parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                              Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                              which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                              language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                              Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                              Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                              clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                              by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                              spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                              century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                              The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                              appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                              Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                              attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                              instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                              ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                              for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                              79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                              4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                              times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                              accent mark to denote vowel length

                              40

                              68 AM 132 fol

                              The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                              (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                              included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                              as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                              seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                              Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                              and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                              that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                              secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                              an their spelling discussed below)

                              Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                              faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                              feacutekk fingu fenginn

                              (finginn)

                              falla fell fellu fallinn

                              feacutell feacutellu

                              ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                              gingu (gingit)

                              halda helt heldu haldinn

                              heacutelt heacuteldu

                              Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                              notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                              accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                              vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                              other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                              41

                              are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                              ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                              Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                              ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                              Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                              Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                              occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                              (23819)

                              But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                              diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                              halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                              preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                              without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                              times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                              neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                              [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                              preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                              times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                              an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                              nor accent mark

                              Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                              diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                              hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                              do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                              expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                              here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                              heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                              42

                              the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                              accent mark

                              69 Summary

                              To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                              texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                              short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                              similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                              largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                              characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                              in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                              in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                              subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                              has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                              the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                              of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                              Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                              always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                              the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                              diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                              as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                              short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                              (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                              with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                              only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                              will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                              reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                              43

                              spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                              language

                              7 Conclusions

                              As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                              (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                              attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                              of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                              singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                              Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                              to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                              likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                              which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                              root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                              vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                              syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                              are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                              produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                              Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                              of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                              VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                              long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                              preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                              chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                              may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                              obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                              reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                              44

                              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                              of Old English and Old High German

                              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                              place

                              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                              etc)

                              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                              different processes

                              45

                              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                              subclass VIIc preterites)

                              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                              its preterite forms

                              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                              46

                              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                              47

                              8 Bibliography

                              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                              48

                              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                              109159-178

                              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                              Hamburg

                              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                              2009

                              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                              Heidelberg

                              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                              history Word 15 282-312

                              49

                              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                              Press Oxford

                              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                              2333-47

                              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                              50

                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                              Leiden University Press Leiden

                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                              Copenhagen

                              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                              studie Gleerup Lund

                              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                              Society of America Philadelphia

                              51

                              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                              University Press Oxford

                              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                              (Saale)

                              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                              Society of America Washington DC

                              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                              Ruprecht

                              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                              maatschappij Amsterdam

                              52

                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                              Lingua 5289-123

                              53

                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms

                                and consequently

                                c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in

                                the above subclasses (see chapter 4)

                                d) in subclass VIIb especially when the root started with a vowel a kind

                                of contraction took place at the same time re-modelling the new ō-

                                vocalism to a pattern close if not identical to class VI preterites (the

                                migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy)

                                e) subclass VIIf would then work as a waste bin for orphaned forms

                                which because of their inner structure fully retained reduplication

                                but of which only sera did originally ablaut the last vowel was then

                                easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -etha

                                f) the verbum puro būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic

                                languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to

                                subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction būaną ~ beƀ gt

                                bew gt beū gt bjoacute (plural forms would then be analogical

                                according to the VIIb alternation)

                                The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

                                reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was

                                long or short This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites since

                                even when their development is satisfactorily explained the results are

                                often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses In Proto-Germanic

                                subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as

                                subclass VIIa verbs so they are expected to behave in a similar way even

                                after the reduplication period And yet their development is different as

                                they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade It

                                has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner

                                structure (see chapter 4) Their distinctive features are the following

                                14

                                a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                                CeiC

                                b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                                resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                                assimilated

                                c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                                vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                                e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                                Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                                and Old Frisian

                                An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                                Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                                Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                                Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                                ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                                held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                                felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                                fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                                hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                                gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                                fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                                Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                                later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                                problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                                that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                                As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                                15

                                type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                                the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                                productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                                High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                                in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                                VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                                39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                                Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                                Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                                to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                                diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                                definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                                Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                                system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                                Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                                option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                                diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                                VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                                Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                                Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                                Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                                fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                                is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                                starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                                ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                                Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                                be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                                Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                                16

                                1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                                been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                                of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                                no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                                order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                                way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                                preterites will be examined more specifically

                                4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                                Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                                times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                                of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                                following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                                a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                                b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                                Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                                and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                                root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                                analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                                vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                                lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                                vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                                diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                                whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                                17

                                syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                                underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                                Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                                a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                                verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                                common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                                lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                                door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                                An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                                phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                                Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                                especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                                is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                                in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                                developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                                (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                                originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                                later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                                by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                                in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                                ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                                alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                                Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                                a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                                especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                                preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                                18

                                However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                19

                                Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                syllable however

                                20

                                5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                vowel in Germanic

                                According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                21

                                inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                (199134)

                                According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                wit the present stem)

                                bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                lē2t-

                                bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                22

                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                strong verbs

                                The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                23

                                change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                24

                                exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                lengthening (1980118)

                                Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                25

                                phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                study that

                                a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                1972139)

                                which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                language well into the modern language

                                Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                26

                                liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                stems was likewise neutralised

                                6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                61 Introduction

                                As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                27

                                which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                glance

                                The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                28

                                length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                29

                                more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                30

                                author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                Grg)

                                31

                                Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                heacutet heacutett

                                het

                                3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                fexkfecc fecc

                                FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                gek geck gek

                                HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                her (2) her

                                her (3) her (16)

                                her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                her her (3)

                                In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                32

                                instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                15 4to see below)

                                63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                time span between the writing of its single parts

                                Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                33

                                up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                34

                                kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                with some instances of derounding to e

                                bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                reported 44 see table above)

                                bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                far the instances where it is absent

                                bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                35

                                Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                Weenen (2000)

                                Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                helt heck (3) hek

                                ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                III)

                                bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                36

                                Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                ecc (3)

                                FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                hellthelt

                                HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                ſnere ſneɼe

                                VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                37

                                richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                65 NRA 52

                                Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                89)

                                [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                towards a distinctively short vowel

                                66 GKS 2087 4to

                                The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                38

                                manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                according to Buergel (1904)

                                Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                Orthography N of Occurrences

                                VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                39

                                67 AM 519a 4deg

                                The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                accent mark to denote vowel length

                                40

                                68 AM 132 fol

                                The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                an their spelling discussed below)

                                Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                (finginn)

                                falla fell fellu fallinn

                                feacutell feacutellu

                                ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                gingu (gingit)

                                halda helt heldu haldinn

                                heacutelt heacuteldu

                                Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                41

                                are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                (23819)

                                But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                nor accent mark

                                Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                42

                                the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                accent mark

                                69 Summary

                                To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                43

                                spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                language

                                7 Conclusions

                                As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                44

                                Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                of Old English and Old High German

                                Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                place

                                a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                etc)

                                b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                different processes

                                45

                                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                subclass VIIc preterites)

                                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                its preterite forms

                                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                46

                                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                47

                                8 Bibliography

                                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                48

                                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                109159-178

                                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                Hamburg

                                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                2009

                                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                Heidelberg

                                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                history Word 15 282-312

                                49

                                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                Press Oxford

                                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                2333-47

                                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                50

                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                Leiden University Press Leiden

                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                Copenhagen

                                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                studie Gleerup Lund

                                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                Society of America Philadelphia

                                51

                                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                University Press Oxford

                                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                (Saale)

                                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                Society of America Washington DC

                                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                Ruprecht

                                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                maatschappij Amsterdam

                                52

                                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                Lingua 5289-123

                                53

                                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                  a) their default (present) root structure is CaRC rather than

                                  CeiC

                                  b) the final consonant was originally voiced and if it is not a

                                  resonant it is later devoiced and if there is an adjacent nasal it is

                                  assimilated

                                  c) at times not only the quantity but also the quality of the root

                                  vowel fluctuates between e and i in Old Norse (i in East Norse

                                  e in West Norse although i is sometimes found as a variant in

                                  Old Icelandic cf Chapter 6 section on Moumlethruvallaboacutek) Old Saxon

                                  and Old Frisian

                                  An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf

                                  Fulk 1987169-172 Torp 1909 Katara 1939 for Old Saxon Steller 1928 and

                                  Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian)

                                  Table 6 Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

                                  ON OHG OS OE OFris Go

                                  held hialt held hēold hēldhīld haiacutehald

                                  felt fialt feld fēold faiacutefald

                                  fekk fiang feng fēng fengfing faiacutefāh

                                  hekk hiang heng hēng henghweng haiacutehāh

                                  gekk giang geng gēong gengging (gaiacutegagg)

                                  fell fial fellfēl fēoll fol faiacutefal

                                  Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (ē

                                  later ia and then ie) alongside Old English where it is more

                                  problematic to trace back the original vowel length but it seems however

                                  that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987171)

                                  As shown in the table in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

                                  15

                                  type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                                  the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                                  productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                                  High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                                  in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                                  VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                                  39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                                  Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                                  Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                                  to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                                  diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                                  definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                                  Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                                  system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                                  Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                                  option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                                  diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                                  VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                                  Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                                  Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                                  Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                                  fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                                  is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                                  starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                                  ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                                  Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                                  be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                                  Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                                  16

                                  1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                                  been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                                  of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                                  no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                                  order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                                  way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                                  preterites will be examined more specifically

                                  4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                                  Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                                  times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                                  of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                                  following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                                  a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                                  b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                                  Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                                  and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                                  root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                                  analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                                  vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                                  lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                                  vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                                  diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                                  whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                                  17

                                  syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                                  underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                                  Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                                  a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                                  verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                                  common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                                  lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                                  door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                                  An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                                  phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                                  Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                                  especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                                  is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                                  in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                                  developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                                  (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                                  originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                                  later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                                  by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                                  in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                                  ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                                  alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                                  Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                                  a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                                  especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                                  preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                                  18

                                  However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                  phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                  reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                  Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                  vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                  agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                  those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                  infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                  Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                  formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                  Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                  Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                  having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                  produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                  new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                  as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                  ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                  developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                  actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                  that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                  discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                  Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                  North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                  diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                  gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                  the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                  from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                  19

                                  Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                  (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                  reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                  generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                  syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                  opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                  lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                  subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                  that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                  syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                  Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                  notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                  ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                  established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                  that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                  and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                  that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                  restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                  Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                  ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                  monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                  plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                  alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                  noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                  place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                  syllable however

                                  20

                                  5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                  Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                  Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                  short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                  ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                  ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                  quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                  noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                  that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                  the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                  P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                  and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                  borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                  substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                  vowel in Germanic

                                  According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                  distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                  derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                  instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                  to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                  assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                  is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                  loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                  innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                  The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                  does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                  21

                                  inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                  own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                  Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                  (199134)

                                  According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                  present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                  some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                  however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                  when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                  occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                  possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                  Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                  This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                  in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                  time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                  VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                  sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                  preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                  span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                  known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                  changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                  bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                  elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                  wit the present stem)

                                  bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                  lē2t-

                                  bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                  22

                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                  But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                  elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                  the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                  Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                  Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                  retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                  elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                  amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                  lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                  haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                  tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                  time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                  been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                  no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                  being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                  The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                  an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                  that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                  discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                  recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                  particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                  of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                  cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                  Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                  strong verbs

                                  The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                  such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                  23

                                  change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                  Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                  instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                  been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                  subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                  orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                  Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                  j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                  very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                  class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                  only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                  result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                  such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                  e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                  Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                  (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                  particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                  (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                  long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                  is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                  regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                  generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                  occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                  frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                  Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                  Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                  hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                  adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                  24

                                  exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                  of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                  fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                  must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                  minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                  masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                  1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                  shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                  short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                  vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                  substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                  lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                  metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                  syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                  lengthening (1980118)

                                  Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                  neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                  affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                  lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                  apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                  vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                  Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                  the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                  be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                  to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                  archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                  phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                  possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                  25

                                  phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                  correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                  observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                  study that

                                  a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                  order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                  with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                  way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                  1972139)

                                  which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                  situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                  required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                  vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                  ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                  was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                  manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                  large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                  period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                  language well into the modern language

                                  Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                  trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                  verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                  that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                  analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                  ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                  prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                  how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                  26

                                  liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                  eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                  obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                  little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                  the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                  that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                  stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                  correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                  infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                  from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                  is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                  noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                  roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                  root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                  stems was likewise neutralised

                                  6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                  61 Introduction

                                  As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                  the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                  in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                  Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                  the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                  diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                  Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                  containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                  27

                                  which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                  Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                  here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                  contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                  glance

                                  The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                  earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                  is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                  has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                  phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                  considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                  gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                  mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                  marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                  a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                  ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                  evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                  vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                  are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                  to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                  monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                  vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                  in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                  In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                  mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                  scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                  (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                  28

                                  length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                  2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                  practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                  stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                  similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                  Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                  the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                  potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                  The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                  the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                  scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                  until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                  made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                  Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                  longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                  Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                  solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                  separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                  were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                  make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                  vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                  the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                  parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                  of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                  sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                  just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                  The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                  that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                  29

                                  more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                  manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                  because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                  for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                  testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                  small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                  written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                  its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                  like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                  widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                  practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                  harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                  In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                  Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                  century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                  has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                  (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                  the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                  used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                  systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                  non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                  extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                  It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                  graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                  Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                  and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                  encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                  etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                  30

                                  author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                  cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                  62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                  Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                  in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                  occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                  subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                  For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                  commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                  number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                  desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                  including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                  GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                  abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                  4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                  Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                  Grg)

                                  31

                                  Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                  237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                  VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                  (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                  heacutet heacutett

                                  het

                                  3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                  VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                  fexkfecc fecc

                                  FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                  GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                  gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                  (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                  gek geck gek

                                  HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                  heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                  HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                  VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                  SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                  ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                  3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                  Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                  her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                  her (2) her

                                  her (3) her (16)

                                  her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                  her her (3)

                                  In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                  once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                  other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                  person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                  overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                  between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                  6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                  32

                                  instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                  ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                  accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                  VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                  only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                  15 4to see below)

                                  63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                  One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                  so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                  about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                  extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                  scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                  orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                  that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                  20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                  hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                  been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                  scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                  popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                  Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                  but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                  several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                  the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                  time span between the writing of its single parts

                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                  mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                  33

                                  up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                  called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                  manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                  According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                  placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                  of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                  Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                  and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                  times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                  more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                  lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                  of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                  The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                  Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                  others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                  orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                  Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                  a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                  either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                  b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                  lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                  c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                  In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                  lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                  derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                  of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                  historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                  34

                                  kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                  development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                  [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                  always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                  manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                  Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                  spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                  would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                  bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                  with some instances of derounding to e

                                  bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                  lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                  reported 44 see table above)

                                  bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                  far the instances where it is absent

                                  bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                  diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                  35

                                  Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                  divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                  Weenen (2000)

                                  Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                  a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                  feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                  helt heck (3) hek

                                  ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                  d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                  62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                  g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                  97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                  heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                  64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                  A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                  manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                  (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                  bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                  III)

                                  bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                  bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                  bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                  36

                                  Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                  Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                  VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                  ecc (3)

                                  FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                  GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                  gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                  HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                  hellthelt

                                  HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                  VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                  SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                  ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                  ſnere ſneɼe

                                  VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                  heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                  heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                  ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                  her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                  her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                  Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                  ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                  possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                  does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                  preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                  With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                  against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                  given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                  time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                  AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                  received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                  37

                                  richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                  when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                  65 NRA 52

                                  Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                  the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                  and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                  how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                  very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                  length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                  89)

                                  [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                  vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                  akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                  percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                  In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                  are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                  preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                  forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                  towards a distinctively short vowel

                                  66 GKS 2087 4to

                                  The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                  precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                  38

                                  manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                  one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                  continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                  the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                  short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                  class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                  Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                  according to Buergel (1904)

                                  Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                  Orthography N of Occurrences

                                  VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                  VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                  VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                  HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                  FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                  GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                  VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                  RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                  VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                  Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                  correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                  no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                  39

                                  67 AM 519a 4deg

                                  The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                  the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                  Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                  parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                  Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                  which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                  language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                  Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                  Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                  clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                  by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                  spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                  century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                  The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                  appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                  Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                  attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                  instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                  ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                  for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                  79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                  4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                  times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                  accent mark to denote vowel length

                                  40

                                  68 AM 132 fol

                                  The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                  (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                  included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                  as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                  seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                  Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                  and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                  that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                  secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                  an their spelling discussed below)

                                  Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                  faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                  feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                  (finginn)

                                  falla fell fellu fallinn

                                  feacutell feacutellu

                                  ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                  gingu (gingit)

                                  halda helt heldu haldinn

                                  heacutelt heacuteldu

                                  Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                  notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                  accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                  vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                  other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                  41

                                  are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                  ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                  Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                  ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                  Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                  Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                  occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                  (23819)

                                  But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                  diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                  halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                  preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                  without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                  times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                  neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                  [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                  preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                  times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                  an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                  nor accent mark

                                  Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                  diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                  hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                  do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                  expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                  here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                  heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                  42

                                  the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                  accent mark

                                  69 Summary

                                  To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                  texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                  short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                  similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                  largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                  characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                  in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                  in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                  subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                  has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                  the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                  of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                  Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                  always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                  the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                  diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                  as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                  short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                  (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                  with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                  only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                  will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                  reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                  43

                                  spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                  language

                                  7 Conclusions

                                  As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                  (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                  attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                  of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                  singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                  Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                  to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                  likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                  which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                  root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                  vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                  syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                  are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                  produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                  Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                  of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                  VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                  long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                  preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                  chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                  may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                  obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                  reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                  44

                                  Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                  of Old English and Old High German

                                  Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                  several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                  e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                  being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                  the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                  without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                  primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                  neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                  preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                  monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                  and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                  subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                  Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                  place

                                  a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                  long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                  etc)

                                  b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                  short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                  neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                  Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                  different processes

                                  45

                                  c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                  subclass VIIc preterites)

                                  d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                  its preterite forms

                                  e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                  adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                  extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                  Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                  diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                  process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                  typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                  syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                  CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                  CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                  across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                  forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                  diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                  [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                  1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                  [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                  diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                  heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                  gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                  Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                  blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                  Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                  diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                  46

                                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                  47

                                  8 Bibliography

                                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                  48

                                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                  109159-178

                                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                  Hamburg

                                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                  2009

                                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                  Heidelberg

                                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                  history Word 15 282-312

                                  49

                                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                  Press Oxford

                                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                  2333-47

                                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                  50

                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                  Copenhagen

                                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                  studie Gleerup Lund

                                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                  Society of America Philadelphia

                                  51

                                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                  University Press Oxford

                                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                  (Saale)

                                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                  Society of America Washington DC

                                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                  Ruprecht

                                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                                  52

                                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                  Lingua 5289-123

                                  53

                                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                    type has been absorbed into another type characterised by a long vowel in

                                    the preterite In Old English it merged with the b-type which was

                                    productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms in Old

                                    High German it merged with the a-type acquiring thus the diphthong ia

                                    in the preterite Through this process the anomaly of a short vowel in class

                                    VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Joumlrundur Hilmarson 199138-

                                    39) with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore

                                    Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967286-287) and Old

                                    Saxon The latter shows chiefly a short vowel being thus all in all identical

                                    to Old Icelandic The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or

                                    diphthongised before a simple consonant like in fell gt fel gt fēl but it

                                    definitely appears to be a later minor innovation The evidence for Old

                                    Frisian is somewhat less clear due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel

                                    system although a short vowel seems to dominate

                                    Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

                                    option but has further implications Old Icelandic is not the anomaly the

                                    diphthongisation e gt ei gt ie which seems to affect some of subclass

                                    VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in

                                    Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources in apparently the same instances

                                    Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the

                                    Heliand) the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short and

                                    fluctuates between e and i (as in gengging) whereas the latter phoneme

                                    is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time In late Old Saxon it also

                                    starts appearing as lteegt lteigt lteygt and in those words containing i as

                                    ltiegt and later into Middle Low German it monophthongises to lteegt (cf

                                    Katara 1939114) There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation e~i to

                                    be dependent on a long vowel or even less plausibly to be a reflex of

                                    Proto-Germanic ē2 (as it is often claimed among others by Fulk

                                    16

                                    1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                                    been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                                    of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                                    no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                                    order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                                    way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                                    preterites will be examined more specifically

                                    4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                                    Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                                    times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                                    of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                                    following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                                    a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                                    b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                                    Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                                    and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                                    root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                                    analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                                    vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                                    lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                                    vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                                    diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                                    whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                                    17

                                    syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                                    underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                                    Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                                    a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                                    verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                                    common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                                    lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                                    door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                                    An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                                    phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                                    Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                                    especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                                    is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                                    in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                                    developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                                    (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                                    originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                                    later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                                    by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                                    in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                                    ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                                    alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                                    Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                                    a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                                    especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                                    preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                                    18

                                    However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                    phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                    reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                    Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                    vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                    agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                    those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                    infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                    Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                    formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                    Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                    Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                    having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                    produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                    new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                    as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                    ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                    developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                    actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                    that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                    discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                    Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                    North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                    diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                    gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                    the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                    from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                    19

                                    Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                    (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                    reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                    generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                    syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                    opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                    lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                    subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                    that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                    syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                    Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                    notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                    ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                    established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                    that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                    and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                    that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                    restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                    Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                    ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                    monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                    plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                    alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                    noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                    place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                    syllable however

                                    20

                                    5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                    Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                    Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                    short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                    ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                    ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                    quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                    noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                    that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                    the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                    P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                    and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                    borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                    substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                    vowel in Germanic

                                    According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                    distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                    derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                    instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                    to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                    assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                    is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                    loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                    innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                    The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                    does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                    21

                                    inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                    own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                    Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                    (199134)

                                    According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                    present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                    some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                    however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                    when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                    occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                    possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                    Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                    This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                    in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                    time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                    VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                    sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                    preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                    span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                    known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                    changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                    bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                    elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                    wit the present stem)

                                    bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                    lē2t-

                                    bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                    22

                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                    But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                    elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                    the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                    Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                    Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                    retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                    elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                    amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                    lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                    haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                    tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                    time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                    been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                    no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                    being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                    The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                    an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                    that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                    discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                    recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                    particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                    of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                    cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                    Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                    strong verbs

                                    The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                    such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                    23

                                    change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                    Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                    instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                    been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                    subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                    orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                    Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                    j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                    very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                    class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                    only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                    result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                    such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                    e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                    Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                    (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                    particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                    (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                    long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                    is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                    regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                    generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                    occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                    frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                    Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                    Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                    hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                    adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                    24

                                    exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                    of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                    fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                    must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                    minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                    masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                    1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                    shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                    short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                    vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                    substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                    lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                    metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                    syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                    lengthening (1980118)

                                    Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                    neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                    affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                    lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                    apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                    vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                    Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                    the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                    be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                    to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                    archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                    phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                    possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                    25

                                    phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                    correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                    observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                    study that

                                    a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                    order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                    with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                    way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                    1972139)

                                    which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                    situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                    required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                    vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                    ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                    was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                    manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                    large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                    period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                    language well into the modern language

                                    Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                    trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                    verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                    that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                    analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                    ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                    prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                    how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                    26

                                    liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                    eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                    obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                    little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                    the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                    that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                    stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                    correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                    infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                    from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                    is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                    noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                    roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                    root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                    stems was likewise neutralised

                                    6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                    61 Introduction

                                    As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                    the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                    in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                    Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                    the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                    diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                    Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                    containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                    27

                                    which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                    Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                    here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                    contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                    glance

                                    The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                    earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                    is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                    has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                    phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                    considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                    gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                    mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                    marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                    a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                    ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                    evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                    vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                    are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                    to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                    monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                    vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                    in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                    In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                    mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                    scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                    (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                    28

                                    length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                    2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                    practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                    stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                    similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                    Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                    the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                    potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                    The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                    the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                    scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                    until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                    made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                    Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                    longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                    Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                    solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                    separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                    were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                    make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                    vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                    the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                    parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                    of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                    sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                    just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                    The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                    that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                    29

                                    more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                    manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                    because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                    for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                    testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                    small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                    written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                    its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                    like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                    widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                    practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                    harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                    In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                    Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                    century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                    has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                    (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                    the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                    used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                    systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                    non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                    extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                    It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                    graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                    Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                    and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                    encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                    etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                    30

                                    author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                    cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                    62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                    Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                    in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                    occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                    subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                    For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                    commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                    number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                    desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                    including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                    GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                    abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                    4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                    Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                    Grg)

                                    31

                                    Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                    237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                    VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                    (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                    heacutet heacutett

                                    het

                                    3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                    VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                    fexkfecc fecc

                                    FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                    GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                    gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                    (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                    gek geck gek

                                    HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                    heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                    HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                    VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                    SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                    ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                    3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                    Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                    her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                    her (2) her

                                    her (3) her (16)

                                    her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                    her her (3)

                                    In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                    once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                    other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                    person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                    overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                    between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                    6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                    32

                                    instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                    ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                    accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                    VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                    only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                    15 4to see below)

                                    63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                    One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                    so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                    about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                    extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                    scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                    orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                    that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                    20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                    hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                    been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                    scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                    popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                    Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                    but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                    several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                    the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                    time span between the writing of its single parts

                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                    mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                    33

                                    up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                    called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                    manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                    According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                    placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                    of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                    Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                    and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                    times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                    more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                    lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                    of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                    The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                    Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                    others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                    orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                    Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                    a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                    either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                    b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                    lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                    c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                    In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                    lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                    derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                    of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                    historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                    34

                                    kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                    development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                    [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                    always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                    manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                    Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                    spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                    would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                    bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                    with some instances of derounding to e

                                    bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                    lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                    reported 44 see table above)

                                    bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                    far the instances where it is absent

                                    bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                    diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                    35

                                    Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                    divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                    Weenen (2000)

                                    Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                    a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                    feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                    helt heck (3) hek

                                    ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                    d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                    62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                    g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                    97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                    heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                    A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                    manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                    (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                    bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                    III)

                                    bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                    bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                    bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                    36

                                    Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                    Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                    VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                    ecc (3)

                                    FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                    GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                    gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                    HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                    hellthelt

                                    HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                    VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                    SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                    ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                    ſnere ſneɼe

                                    VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                    heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                    heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                    ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                    her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                    her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                    Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                    ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                    possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                    does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                    preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                    With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                    against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                    given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                    time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                    AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                    received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                    37

                                    richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                    when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                    65 NRA 52

                                    Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                    the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                    and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                    how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                    very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                    length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                    89)

                                    [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                    vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                    akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                    percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                    In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                    are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                    preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                    forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                    towards a distinctively short vowel

                                    66 GKS 2087 4to

                                    The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                    precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                    38

                                    manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                    one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                    continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                    the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                    short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                    class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                    Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                    according to Buergel (1904)

                                    Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                    Orthography N of Occurrences

                                    VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                    VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                    VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                    HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                    FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                    GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                    VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                    RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                    VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                    Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                    correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                    no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                    39

                                    67 AM 519a 4deg

                                    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                    accent mark to denote vowel length

                                    40

                                    68 AM 132 fol

                                    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                    an their spelling discussed below)

                                    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                    feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                    (finginn)

                                    falla fell fellu fallinn

                                    feacutell feacutellu

                                    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                    gingu (gingit)

                                    halda helt heldu haldinn

                                    heacutelt heacuteldu

                                    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                    41

                                    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                    (23819)

                                    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                    nor accent mark

                                    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                    42

                                    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                    accent mark

                                    69 Summary

                                    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                    43

                                    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                    language

                                    7 Conclusions

                                    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                    44

                                    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                    of Old English and Old High German

                                    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                    place

                                    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                    etc)

                                    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                    different processes

                                    45

                                    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                    subclass VIIc preterites)

                                    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                    its preterite forms

                                    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                    46

                                    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                    47

                                    8 Bibliography

                                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                    48

                                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                    109159-178

                                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                    Hamburg

                                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                    2009

                                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                    Heidelberg

                                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                    history Word 15 282-312

                                    49

                                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                    Press Oxford

                                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                    2333-47

                                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                    50

                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                    Copenhagen

                                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                    studie Gleerup Lund

                                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                    Society of America Philadelphia

                                    51

                                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                    University Press Oxford

                                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                    (Saale)

                                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                    Society of America Washington DC

                                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                    Ruprecht

                                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                                    52

                                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                    Lingua 5289-123

                                    53

                                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                      1987171) and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have

                                      been the innovators In fact the situation looks rather like the preservation

                                      of an archaism which has later been analogically levelled There is in short

                                      no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings in

                                      order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other

                                      way around In the following chapter theories on the formation of class VII

                                      preterites will be examined more specifically

                                      4 Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

                                      Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

                                      times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs In one

                                      of his early works Adolf Noreen (1913205) delineates a twofold pattern

                                      following a tradition which had started already with Grimm

                                      a) fefall gt ffall gt ON fal(l) from inf falla

                                      b) hehald gt hēalt gt ON heacutelt from inf halda

                                      Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc

                                      and that pattern b) was later generalised to a) which originally retained the

                                      root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative As a consequence of such

                                      analogical change most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long

                                      vowel from the beginning resulting partly from a compensatory

                                      lengthening (hehald gt hēalt) which later causes a contraction of the root

                                      vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable and partly on analogy The

                                      diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs

                                      whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

                                      17

                                      syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                                      underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                                      Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                                      a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                                      verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                                      common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                                      lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                                      door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                                      An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                                      phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                                      Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                                      especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                                      is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                                      in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                                      developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                                      (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                                      originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                                      later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                                      by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                                      in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                                      ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                                      alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                                      Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                                      a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                                      especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                                      preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                                      18

                                      However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                      phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                      reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                      Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                      vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                      agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                      those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                      infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                      Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                      formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                      Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                      Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                      having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                      produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                      new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                      as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                      ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                      developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                      actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                      that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                      discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                      Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                      North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                      diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                      gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                      the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                      from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                      19

                                      Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                      (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                      reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                      generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                      syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                      opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                      lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                      subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                      that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                      syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                      Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                      notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                      ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                      established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                      that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                      and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                      that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                      restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                      Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                      ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                      monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                      plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                      alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                      noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                      place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                      syllable however

                                      20

                                      5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                      Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                      Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                      short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                      ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                      ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                      quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                      noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                      that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                      the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                      P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                      and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                      borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                      substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                      vowel in Germanic

                                      According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                      distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                      derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                      instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                      to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                      assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                      is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                      loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                      innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                      The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                      does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                      21

                                      inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                      own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                      Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                      (199134)

                                      According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                      present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                      some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                      however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                      when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                      occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                      possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                      Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                      This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                      in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                      time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                      VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                      sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                      preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                      span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                      known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                      changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                      bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                      elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                      wit the present stem)

                                      bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                      lē2t-

                                      bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                      22

                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                      But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                      elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                      the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                      Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                      Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                      retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                      elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                      amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                      lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                      haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                      tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                      time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                      been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                      no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                      being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                      The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                      an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                      that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                      discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                      recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                      particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                      of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                      cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                      Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                      strong verbs

                                      The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                      such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                      23

                                      change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                      Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                      instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                      been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                      subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                      orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                      Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                      j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                      very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                      class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                      only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                      result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                      such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                      e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                      Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                      (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                      particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                      (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                      long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                      is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                      regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                      generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                      occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                      frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                      Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                      Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                      hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                      adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                      24

                                      exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                      of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                      fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                      must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                      minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                      masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                      1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                      shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                      short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                      vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                      substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                      lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                      metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                      syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                      lengthening (1980118)

                                      Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                      neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                      affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                      lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                      apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                      vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                      Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                      the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                      be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                      to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                      archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                      phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                      possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                      25

                                      phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                      correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                      observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                      study that

                                      a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                      order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                      with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                      way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                      1972139)

                                      which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                      situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                      required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                      vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                      ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                      was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                      manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                      large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                      period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                      language well into the modern language

                                      Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                      trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                      verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                      that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                      analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                      ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                      prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                      how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                      26

                                      liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                      eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                      obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                      little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                      the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                      that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                      stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                      correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                      infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                      from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                      is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                      noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                      roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                      root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                      stems was likewise neutralised

                                      6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                      61 Introduction

                                      As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                      the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                      in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                      Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                      the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                      diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                      Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                      containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                      27

                                      which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                      Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                      here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                      contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                      glance

                                      The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                      earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                      is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                      has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                      phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                      considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                      gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                      mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                      marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                      a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                      ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                      evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                      vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                      are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                      to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                      monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                      vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                      in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                      In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                      mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                      scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                      (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                      28

                                      length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                      2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                      practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                      stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                      similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                      Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                      the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                      potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                      The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                      the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                      scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                      until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                      made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                      Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                      longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                      Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                      solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                      separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                      were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                      make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                      vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                      the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                      parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                      of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                      sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                      just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                      The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                      that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                      29

                                      more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                      manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                      because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                      for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                      testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                      small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                      written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                      its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                      like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                      widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                      practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                      harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                      In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                      Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                      century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                      has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                      (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                      the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                      used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                      systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                      non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                      extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                      It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                      graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                      Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                      and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                      encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                      etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                      30

                                      author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                      cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                      62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                      Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                      in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                      occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                      subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                      For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                      commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                      number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                      desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                      including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                      GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                      abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                      4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                      Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                      Grg)

                                      31

                                      Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                      237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                      VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                      (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                      heacutet heacutett

                                      het

                                      3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                      VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                      fexkfecc fecc

                                      FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                      GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                      gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                      (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                      gek geck gek

                                      HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                      heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                      HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                      VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                      SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                      ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                      3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                      Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                      her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                      her (2) her

                                      her (3) her (16)

                                      her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                      her her (3)

                                      In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                      once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                      other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                      person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                      overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                      between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                      6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                      32

                                      instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                      ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                      accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                      VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                      only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                      15 4to see below)

                                      63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                      One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                      so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                      about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                      extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                      scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                      orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                      that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                      20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                      hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                      been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                      scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                      popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                      Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                      but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                      several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                      the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                      time span between the writing of its single parts

                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                      mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                      33

                                      up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                      called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                      manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                      According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                      placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                      of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                      Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                      and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                      times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                      more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                      lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                      of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                      The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                      Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                      others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                      orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                      Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                      a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                      either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                      b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                      lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                      c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                      In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                      lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                      derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                      of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                      historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                      34

                                      kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                      development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                      [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                      always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                      manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                      Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                      spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                      would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                      bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                      with some instances of derounding to e

                                      bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                      lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                      reported 44 see table above)

                                      bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                      far the instances where it is absent

                                      bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                      diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                      35

                                      Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                      divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                      Weenen (2000)

                                      Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                      a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                      feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                      helt heck (3) hek

                                      ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                      d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                      62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                      g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                      97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                      heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                      A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                      manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                      (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                      bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                      III)

                                      bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                      bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                      bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                      36

                                      Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                      Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                      VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                      ecc (3)

                                      FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                      GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                      gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                      HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                      hellthelt

                                      HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                      VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                      SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                      ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                      ſnere ſneɼe

                                      VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                      heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                      heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                      ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                      her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                      her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                      Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                      ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                      possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                      does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                      preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                      With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                      against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                      given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                      time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                      AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                      received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                      37

                                      richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                      when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                      65 NRA 52

                                      Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                      the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                      and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                      how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                      very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                      length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                      89)

                                      [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                      vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                      akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                      percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                      In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                      are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                      preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                      forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                      towards a distinctively short vowel

                                      66 GKS 2087 4to

                                      The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                      precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                      38

                                      manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                      one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                      continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                      the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                      short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                      class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                      Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                      according to Buergel (1904)

                                      Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                      Orthography N of Occurrences

                                      VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                      VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                      VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                      HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                      FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                      GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                      VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                      RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                      VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                      Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                      correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                      no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                      39

                                      67 AM 519a 4deg

                                      The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                      the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                      Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                      parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                      Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                      which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                      language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                      Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                      Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                      clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                      by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                      spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                      century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                      The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                      appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                      Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                      attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                      instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                      ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                      for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                      79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                      4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                      times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                      accent mark to denote vowel length

                                      40

                                      68 AM 132 fol

                                      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                      an their spelling discussed below)

                                      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                      feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                      (finginn)

                                      falla fell fellu fallinn

                                      feacutell feacutellu

                                      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                      gingu (gingit)

                                      halda helt heldu haldinn

                                      heacutelt heacuteldu

                                      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                      41

                                      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                      (23819)

                                      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                      nor accent mark

                                      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                      42

                                      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                      accent mark

                                      69 Summary

                                      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                      43

                                      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                      language

                                      7 Conclusions

                                      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                      44

                                      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                      of Old English and Old High German

                                      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                      place

                                      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                      etc)

                                      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                      different processes

                                      45

                                      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                      subclass VIIc preterites)

                                      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                      its preterite forms

                                      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                      46

                                      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                      47

                                      8 Bibliography

                                      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                      48

                                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                      109159-178

                                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                      Hamburg

                                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                      2009

                                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                      Heidelberg

                                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                      history Word 15 282-312

                                      49

                                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                      Press Oxford

                                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                      2333-47

                                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                      50

                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                      Copenhagen

                                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                      studie Gleerup Lund

                                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                      Society of America Philadelphia

                                      51

                                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                      University Press Oxford

                                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                      (Saale)

                                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                      Society of America Washington DC

                                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                      Ruprecht

                                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                                      52

                                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                      Lingua 5289-123

                                      53

                                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                        syllable (sneri gt sneacuteri) Those forms which were not subject to this change

                                        underwent analogical change (fall gt feacutell)

                                        Heusler (195092-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture with

                                        a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites He argued that ldquodas nord fell

                                        verlangt keine Vorstufe fēllrdquo His intention was possibly to criticise the

                                        common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary

                                        lengthening and then later been shortened as in Boer (1920191) ldquoDe e is

                                        door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaanrdquo

                                        An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a

                                        phono-morphological ablaut-based derivation once popular among the

                                        Neogrammarians This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach

                                        especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory An epitome of this school

                                        is Van Coetsem (1956) Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as

                                        in haiacutehait is exclusively found in Gothic while Northwest Germanic

                                        developed its own VII-class ablaut grades In his scenario subclasses VIIa

                                        (present root vocalism ai) and VIId (present root vowel ē1) had

                                        originally developed the same ldquoaugmented graderdquo ei in the preterite

                                        later this newly formed diphthong ei monophthongised to ē2 pushed

                                        by the development ai gt ei in the infinitive Subclass VIIc fits nicely

                                        in to the reconstructed alternation ai ~ ei and similarly in VIIb au

                                        ~ eu (gt jō) corresponds the simpler a ~ e This kind of

                                        alternation has also been called reversed ablaut (Ablaut in umgekehrte

                                        Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European e ~

                                        a ablaut alternation This theory still has much to recommend it

                                        especially because by acknowledging an original short e in subclass VIIc

                                        preterites the overall picture becomes simpler

                                        18

                                        However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                        phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                        reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                        Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                        vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                        agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                        those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                        infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                        Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                        formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                        Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                        Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                        having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                        produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                        new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                        as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                        ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                        developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                        actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                        that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                        discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                        Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                        North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                        diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                        gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                        the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                        from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                        19

                                        Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                        (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                        reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                        generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                        syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                        opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                        lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                        subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                        that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                        syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                        Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                        notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                        ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                        established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                        that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                        and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                        that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                        restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                        Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                        ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                        monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                        plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                        alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                        noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                        place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                        syllable however

                                        20

                                        5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                        Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                        Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                        short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                        ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                        ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                        quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                        noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                        that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                        the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                        P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                        and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                        borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                        substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                        vowel in Germanic

                                        According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                        distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                        derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                        instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                        to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                        assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                        is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                        loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                        innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                        The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                        does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                        21

                                        inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                        own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                        Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                        (199134)

                                        According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                        present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                        some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                        however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                        when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                        occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                        possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                        Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                        This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                        in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                        time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                        VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                        sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                        preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                        span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                        known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                        changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                        bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                        elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                        wit the present stem)

                                        bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                        lē2t-

                                        bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                        22

                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                        But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                        elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                        the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                        Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                        Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                        retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                        elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                        amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                        lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                        haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                        tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                        time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                        been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                        no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                        being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                        The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                        an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                        that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                        discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                        recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                        particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                        of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                        cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                        Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                        strong verbs

                                        The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                        such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                        23

                                        change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                        Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                        instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                        been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                        subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                        orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                        Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                        j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                        very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                        class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                        only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                        result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                        such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                        e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                        Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                        (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                        particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                        (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                        long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                        is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                        regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                        generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                        occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                        frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                        Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                        Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                        hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                        adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                        24

                                        exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                        of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                        fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                        must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                        minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                        masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                        1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                        shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                        short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                        vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                        substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                        lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                        metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                        syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                        lengthening (1980118)

                                        Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                        neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                        affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                        lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                        apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                        vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                        Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                        the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                        be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                        to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                        archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                        phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                        possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                        25

                                        phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                        correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                        observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                        study that

                                        a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                        order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                        with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                        way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                        1972139)

                                        which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                        situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                        required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                        vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                        ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                        was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                        manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                        large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                        period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                        language well into the modern language

                                        Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                        trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                        verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                        that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                        analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                        ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                        prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                        how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                        26

                                        liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                        eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                        obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                        little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                        the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                        that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                        stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                        correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                        infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                        from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                        is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                        noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                        roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                        root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                        stems was likewise neutralised

                                        6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                        61 Introduction

                                        As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                        the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                        in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                        Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                        the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                        diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                        Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                        containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                        27

                                        which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                        Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                        here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                        contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                        glance

                                        The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                        earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                        is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                        has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                        phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                        considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                        gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                        mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                        marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                        a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                        ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                        evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                        vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                        are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                        to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                        monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                        vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                        in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                        In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                        mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                        scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                        (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                        28

                                        length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                        2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                        practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                        stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                        similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                        Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                        the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                        potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                        The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                        the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                        scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                        until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                        made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                        Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                        longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                        Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                        solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                        separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                        were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                        make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                        vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                        the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                        parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                        of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                        sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                        just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                        The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                        that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                        29

                                        more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                        manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                        because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                        for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                        testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                        small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                        written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                        its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                        like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                        widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                        practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                        harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                        In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                        Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                        century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                        has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                        (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                        the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                        used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                        systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                        non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                        extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                        It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                        graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                        Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                        and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                        encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                        etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                        30

                                        author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                        cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                        62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                        Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                        in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                        occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                        subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                        For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                        commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                        number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                        desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                        including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                        GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                        abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                        4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                        Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                        Grg)

                                        31

                                        Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                        237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                        VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                        (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                        heacutet heacutett

                                        het

                                        3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                        VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                        fexkfecc fecc

                                        FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                        GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                        gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                        (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                        gek geck gek

                                        HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                        heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                        HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                        VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                        SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                        ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                        3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                        Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                        her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                        her (2) her

                                        her (3) her (16)

                                        her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                        her her (3)

                                        In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                        once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                        other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                        person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                        overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                        between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                        6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                        32

                                        instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                        ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                        accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                        VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                        only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                        15 4to see below)

                                        63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                        One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                        so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                        about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                        extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                        scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                        orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                        that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                        20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                        hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                        been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                        scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                        popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                        Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                        but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                        several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                        the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                        time span between the writing of its single parts

                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                        mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                        33

                                        up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                        called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                        manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                        According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                        placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                        of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                        Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                        and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                        times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                        more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                        lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                        of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                        The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                        Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                        others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                        orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                        Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                        a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                        either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                        b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                        lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                        c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                        In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                        lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                        derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                        of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                        historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                        34

                                        kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                        development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                        [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                        always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                        manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                        Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                        spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                        would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                        bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                        with some instances of derounding to e

                                        bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                        lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                        reported 44 see table above)

                                        bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                        far the instances where it is absent

                                        bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                        diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                        35

                                        Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                        divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                        Weenen (2000)

                                        Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                        a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                        feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                        helt heck (3) hek

                                        ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                        d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                        62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                        g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                        97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                        heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                        A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                        manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                        (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                        bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                        III)

                                        bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                        bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                        bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                        36

                                        Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                        Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                        VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                        ecc (3)

                                        FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                        GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                        gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                        HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                        hellthelt

                                        HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                        VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                        SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                        ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                        ſnere ſneɼe

                                        VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                        heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                        heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                        ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                        her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                        her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                        Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                        ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                        possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                        does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                        preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                        With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                        against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                        given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                        time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                        AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                        received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                        37

                                        richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                        when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                        65 NRA 52

                                        Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                        the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                        and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                        how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                        very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                        length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                        89)

                                        [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                        vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                        akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                        percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                        In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                        are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                        preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                        forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                        towards a distinctively short vowel

                                        66 GKS 2087 4to

                                        The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                        precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                        38

                                        manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                        one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                        continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                        the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                        short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                        class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                        Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                        according to Buergel (1904)

                                        Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                        Orthography N of Occurrences

                                        VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                        VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                        VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                        HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                        FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                        GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                        VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                        RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                        VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                        Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                        correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                        no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                        39

                                        67 AM 519a 4deg

                                        The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                        the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                        Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                        parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                        Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                        which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                        language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                        Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                        Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                        clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                        by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                        spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                        century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                        The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                        appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                        Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                        attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                        instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                        ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                        for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                        79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                        4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                        times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                        accent mark to denote vowel length

                                        40

                                        68 AM 132 fol

                                        The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                        (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                        included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                        as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                        seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                        Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                        and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                        that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                        secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                        an their spelling discussed below)

                                        Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                        faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                        feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                        (finginn)

                                        falla fell fellu fallinn

                                        feacutell feacutellu

                                        ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                        gingu (gingit)

                                        halda helt heldu haldinn

                                        heacutelt heacuteldu

                                        Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                        notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                        accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                        vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                        other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                        41

                                        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                        (23819)

                                        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                        nor accent mark

                                        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                        42

                                        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                        accent mark

                                        69 Summary

                                        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                        43

                                        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                        language

                                        7 Conclusions

                                        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                        44

                                        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                        of Old English and Old High German

                                        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                        place

                                        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                        etc)

                                        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                        different processes

                                        45

                                        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                        subclass VIIc preterites)

                                        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                        its preterite forms

                                        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                        46

                                        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                        47

                                        8 Bibliography

                                        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                        48

                                        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                        109159-178

                                        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                        Hamburg

                                        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                        2009

                                        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                        Heidelberg

                                        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                        history Word 15 282-312

                                        49

                                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                        Press Oxford

                                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                        2333-47

                                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                        50

                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                        Copenhagen

                                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                        studie Gleerup Lund

                                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                        Society of America Philadelphia

                                        51

                                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                        University Press Oxford

                                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                        (Saale)

                                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                        Society of America Washington DC

                                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                        Ruprecht

                                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                                        52

                                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                        Lingua 5289-123

                                        53

                                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                          However the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly

                                          phonological In short it is a theory of contraction of the formerly

                                          reduplicating syllable and the root syllable similar to the one formulated by

                                          Noreen and discussed above Contraction generates a new kind of root

                                          vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type Scholars do not

                                          agree on the exact details of the contraction and presently divide between

                                          those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening

                                          infixation ldquocompressionrdquo and haplology

                                          Voyles (199273) explains how ldquoone of the ways class VII strong verbs

                                          formed the past was to insert stressed e into the present-tense stemrdquo

                                          Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed one can assume that

                                          Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been hēlt since the beginning and

                                          having developed from hald gt heald gt healt gt hēlt Voyles does not

                                          produce any real sound law to explain the change ea gt ē only that ldquothe

                                          new diphthong eē in forms like leēt let was interpreted quite naturally

                                          as ērdquo and so ldquosimilarly the new diphthong ea [hellip] was also interpreted as

                                          ērdquo Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories such

                                          developments are in fact highly implausible and not supported by any

                                          actual orthographic evidence (ie the Old Icelandic written sources indicate

                                          that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite as will be

                                          discussed below) It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by

                                          Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in

                                          North Germanic and given the similarity between a hypothetical

                                          diphthong ea in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (e

                                          gt ea gt ja) one would rather expect the development ea gt ja as in

                                          the breaking environment Arguably this was most probably the context

                                          from which the preterite joacutek arose from eauk

                                          19

                                          Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                          (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                          reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                          generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                          syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                          opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                          lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                          subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                          that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                          syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                          Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                          notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                          ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                          established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                          that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                          and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                          that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                          restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                          Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                          ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                          monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                          plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                          alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                          noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                          place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                          syllable however

                                          20

                                          5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                          Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                          Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                          short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                          ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                          ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                          quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                          noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                          that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                          the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                          P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                          and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                          borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                          substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                          vowel in Germanic

                                          According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                          distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                          derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                          instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                          to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                          assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                          is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                          loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                          innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                          The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                          does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                          21

                                          inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                          own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                          Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                          (199134)

                                          According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                          present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                          some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                          however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                          when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                          occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                          possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                          Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                          This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                          in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                          time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                          VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                          sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                          preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                          span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                          known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                          changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                          bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                          elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                          wit the present stem)

                                          bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                          lē2t-

                                          bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                          22

                                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                          But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                          elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                          the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                          Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                          Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                          retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                          elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                          amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                          lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                          haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                          tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                          time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                          been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                          no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                          being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                          The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                          an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                          that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                          discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                          recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                          particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                          of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                          cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                          Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                          strong verbs

                                          The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                          such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                          23

                                          change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                          Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                          instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                          been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                          subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                          orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                          Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                          j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                          very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                          class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                          only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                          result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                          such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                          e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                          Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                          (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                          particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                          (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                          long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                          is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                          regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                          generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                          occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                          frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                          Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                          Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                          hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                          adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                          24

                                          exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                          of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                          fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                          must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                          minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                          masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                          1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                          shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                          short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                          vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                          substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                          lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                          metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                          syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                          lengthening (1980118)

                                          Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                          neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                          affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                          lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                          apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                          vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                          Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                          the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                          be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                          to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                          archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                          phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                          possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                          25

                                          phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                          correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                          observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                          study that

                                          a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                          order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                          with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                          way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                          1972139)

                                          which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                          situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                          required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                          vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                          ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                          was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                          manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                          large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                          period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                          language well into the modern language

                                          Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                          trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                          verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                          that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                          analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                          ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                          prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                          how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                          26

                                          liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                          eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                          obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                          little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                          the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                          that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                          stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                          correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                          infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                          from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                          is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                          noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                          roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                          root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                          stems was likewise neutralised

                                          6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                          61 Introduction

                                          As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                          the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                          in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                          Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                          the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                          diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                          Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                          containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                          27

                                          which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                          Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                          here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                          contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                          glance

                                          The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                          earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                          is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                          has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                          phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                          considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                          gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                          mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                          marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                          a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                          ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                          evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                          vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                          are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                          to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                          monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                          vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                          in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                          In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                          mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                          scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                          (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                          28

                                          length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                          2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                          practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                          stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                          similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                          Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                          the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                          potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                          The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                          the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                          scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                          until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                          made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                          Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                          longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                          Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                          solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                          separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                          were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                          make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                          vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                          the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                          parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                          of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                          sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                          just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                          The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                          that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                          29

                                          more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                          manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                          because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                          for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                          testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                          small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                          written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                          its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                          like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                          widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                          practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                          harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                          In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                          Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                          century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                          has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                          (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                          the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                          used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                          systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                          non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                          extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                          It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                          graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                          Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                          and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                          encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                          etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                          30

                                          author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                          cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                          62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                          Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                          in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                          occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                          subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                          For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                          commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                          number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                          desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                          including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                          GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                          abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                          4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                          Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                          Grg)

                                          31

                                          Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                          237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                          VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                          (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                          heacutet heacutett

                                          het

                                          3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                          VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                          fexkfecc fecc

                                          FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                          GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                          gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                          (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                          gek geck gek

                                          HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                          heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                          HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                          VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                          SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                          ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                          3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                          Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                          her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                          her (2) her

                                          her (3) her (16)

                                          her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                          her her (3)

                                          In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                          once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                          other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                          person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                          overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                          between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                          6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                          32

                                          instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                          ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                          accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                          VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                          only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                          15 4to see below)

                                          63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                          One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                          so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                          about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                          extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                          scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                          orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                          that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                          20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                          hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                          been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                          scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                          popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                          Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                          but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                          several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                          the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                          time span between the writing of its single parts

                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                          mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                          33

                                          up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                          called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                          manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                          According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                          placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                          of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                          Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                          and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                          times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                          more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                          lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                          of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                          The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                          Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                          others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                          orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                          Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                          a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                          either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                          b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                          lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                          c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                          In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                          lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                          derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                          of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                          historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                          34

                                          kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                          development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                          [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                          always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                          manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                          Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                          spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                          would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                          bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                          with some instances of derounding to e

                                          bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                          lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                          reported 44 see table above)

                                          bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                          far the instances where it is absent

                                          bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                          diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                          35

                                          Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                          divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                          Weenen (2000)

                                          Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                          a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                          feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                          helt heck (3) hek

                                          ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                          d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                          62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                          g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                          97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                          heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                          64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                          A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                          manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                          (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                          bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                          III)

                                          bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                          bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                          bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                          36

                                          Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                          Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                          VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                          ecc (3)

                                          FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                          GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                          gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                          HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                          hellthelt

                                          HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                          VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                          SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                          ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                          ſnere ſneɼe

                                          VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                          heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                          heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                          ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                          her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                          her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                          Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                          ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                          possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                          does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                          preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                          With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                          against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                          given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                          time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                          AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                          received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                          37

                                          richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                          when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                          65 NRA 52

                                          Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                          the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                          and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                          how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                          very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                          length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                          89)

                                          [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                          vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                          akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                          percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                          In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                          are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                          preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                          forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                          towards a distinctively short vowel

                                          66 GKS 2087 4to

                                          The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                          precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                          38

                                          manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                          one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                          continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                          the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                          short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                          class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                          Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                          according to Buergel (1904)

                                          Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                          Orthography N of Occurrences

                                          VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                          VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                          VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                          HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                          FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                          GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                          VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                          RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                          VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                          Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                          correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                          no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                          39

                                          67 AM 519a 4deg

                                          The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                          the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                          Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                          parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                          Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                          which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                          language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                          Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                          Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                          clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                          by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                          spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                          century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                          The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                          appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                          Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                          attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                          instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                          ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                          for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                          79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                          4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                          times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                          accent mark to denote vowel length

                                          40

                                          68 AM 132 fol

                                          The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                          (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                          included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                          as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                          seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                          Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                          and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                          that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                          secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                          an their spelling discussed below)

                                          Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                          faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                          feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                          (finginn)

                                          falla fell fellu fallinn

                                          feacutell feacutellu

                                          ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                          gingu (gingit)

                                          halda helt heldu haldinn

                                          heacutelt heacuteldu

                                          Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                          notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                          accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                          vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                          other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                          41

                                          are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                          ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                          Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                          ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                          Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                          Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                          occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                          (23819)

                                          But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                          diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                          halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                          preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                          without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                          times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                          neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                          [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                          preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                          times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                          an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                          nor accent mark

                                          Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                          diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                          hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                          do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                          expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                          here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                          heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                          42

                                          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                          accent mark

                                          69 Summary

                                          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                          43

                                          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                          language

                                          7 Conclusions

                                          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                          44

                                          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                          of Old English and Old High German

                                          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                          place

                                          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                          etc)

                                          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                          different processes

                                          45

                                          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                          subclass VIIc preterites)

                                          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                          its preterite forms

                                          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                          46

                                          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                          47

                                          8 Bibliography

                                          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                          48

                                          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                          109159-178

                                          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                          Hamburg

                                          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                          2009

                                          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                          Heidelberg

                                          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                          history Word 15 282-312

                                          49

                                          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                          Press Oxford

                                          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                          2333-47

                                          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                          50

                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                          Copenhagen

                                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                          studie Gleerup Lund

                                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                          Society of America Philadelphia

                                          51

                                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                          University Press Oxford

                                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                          (Saale)

                                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                          Society of America Washington DC

                                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                          Ruprecht

                                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                                          52

                                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                          Lingua 5289-123

                                          53

                                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                            Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann

                                            (1994) According to Vennemann the different root syllables in

                                            reduplicated forms typically made up of a fricative and a vowel were first

                                            generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV- Later the root vowel was

                                            syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable somehow

                                            opening the way for the elision of -r- which triggered a compensatory

                                            lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel Vennemann assumes therefore that

                                            subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage The assumption

                                            that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating

                                            syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemannrsquos theory (1994306-307)

                                            Vennemannrsquos theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007) who also

                                            notably claims that most of Vennemannrsquos sound laws have been produced

                                            ad hoc Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (ie radical) stress was

                                            established on a Proto-Germanic level thus including Gothic as well and

                                            that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North

                                            and West Germanic concluding therefore that ldquothere is no way in short

                                            that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the

                                            restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanicrdquo (Jasanoff 2007257)

                                            Instead he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking

                                            ldquocompressionrdquo theory where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made

                                            monosyllabic through the ldquoejectionrdquo of the root vowel first in the preterite

                                            plural the consequent cluster was then simplified and the new vowel

                                            alternations were reanalysed as ablaut As a necessary criticism it should be

                                            noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the ldquoejectionrdquo could have taken

                                            place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating

                                            syllable however

                                            20

                                            5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                            Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                            Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                            short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                            ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                            ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                            quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                            noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                            that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                            the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                            P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                            and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                            borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                            substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                            vowel in Germanic

                                            According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                            distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                            derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                            instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                            to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                            assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                            is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                            loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                            innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                            The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                            does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                            21

                                            inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                            own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                            Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                            (199134)

                                            According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                            present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                            some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                            however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                            when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                            occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                            possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                            Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                            This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                            in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                            time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                            VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                            sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                            preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                            span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                            known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                            changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                            bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                            elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                            wit the present stem)

                                            bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                            lē2t-

                                            bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                            22

                                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                            But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                            elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                            the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                            Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                            Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                            retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                            elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                            amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                            lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                            haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                            tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                            time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                            been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                            no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                            being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                            The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                            an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                            that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                            discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                            recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                            particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                            of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                            cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                            Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                            strong verbs

                                            The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                            such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                            23

                                            change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                            Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                            instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                            been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                            subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                            orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                            Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                            j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                            very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                            class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                            only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                            result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                            such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                            e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                            Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                            (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                            particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                            (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                            long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                            is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                            regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                            generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                            occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                            frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                            Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                            Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                            hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                            adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                            24

                                            exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                            of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                            fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                            must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                            minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                            masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                            1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                            shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                            short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                            vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                            substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                            lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                            metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                            syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                            lengthening (1980118)

                                            Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                            neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                            affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                            lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                            apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                            vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                            Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                            the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                            be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                            to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                            archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                            phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                            possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                            25

                                            phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                            correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                            observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                            study that

                                            a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                            order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                            with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                            way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                            1972139)

                                            which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                            situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                            required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                            vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                            ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                            was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                            manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                            large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                            period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                            language well into the modern language

                                            Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                            trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                            verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                            that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                            analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                            ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                            prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                            how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                            26

                                            liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                            eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                            obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                            little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                            the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                            that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                            stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                            correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                            infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                            from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                            is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                            noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                            roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                            root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                            stems was likewise neutralised

                                            6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                            61 Introduction

                                            As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                            the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                            in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                            Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                            the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                            diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                            Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                            containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                            27

                                            which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                            Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                            here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                            contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                            glance

                                            The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                            earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                            is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                            has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                            phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                            considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                            gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                            mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                            marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                            a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                            ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                            evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                            vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                            are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                            to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                            monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                            vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                            in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                            In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                            mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                            scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                            (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                            28

                                            length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                            2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                            practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                            stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                            similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                            Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                            the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                            potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                            The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                            the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                            scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                            until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                            made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                            Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                            longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                            Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                            solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                            separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                            were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                            make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                            vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                            the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                            parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                            of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                            sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                            just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                            The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                            that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                            29

                                            more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                            manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                            because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                            for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                            testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                            small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                            written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                            its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                            like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                            widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                            practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                            harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                            In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                            Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                            century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                            has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                            (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                            the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                            used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                            systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                            non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                            extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                            It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                            graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                            Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                            and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                            encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                            etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                            30

                                            author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                            cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                            62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                            Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                            in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                            occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                            subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                            For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                            commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                            number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                            desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                            including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                            GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                            abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                            4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                            Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                            Grg)

                                            31

                                            Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                            237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                            VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                            (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                            heacutet heacutett

                                            het

                                            3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                            VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                            fexkfecc fecc

                                            FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                            GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                            gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                            (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                            gek geck gek

                                            HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                            heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                            HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                            VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                            SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                            ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                            3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                            Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                            her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                            her (2) her

                                            her (3) her (16)

                                            her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                            her her (3)

                                            In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                            once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                            other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                            person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                            overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                            between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                            6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                            32

                                            instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                            ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                            accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                            VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                            only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                            15 4to see below)

                                            63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                            One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                            so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                            about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                            extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                            scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                            orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                            that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                            20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                            hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                            been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                            scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                            popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                            Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                            but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                            several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                            the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                            time span between the writing of its single parts

                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                            mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                            33

                                            up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                            called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                            manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                            According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                            placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                            of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                            Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                            and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                            times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                            more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                            lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                            of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                            The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                            Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                            others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                            orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                            Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                            a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                            either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                            b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                            lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                            c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                            In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                            lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                            derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                            of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                            historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                            34

                                            kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                            development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                            [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                            always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                            manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                            Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                            spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                            would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                            bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                            with some instances of derounding to e

                                            bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                            lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                            reported 44 see table above)

                                            bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                            far the instances where it is absent

                                            bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                            diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                            35

                                            Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                            divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                            Weenen (2000)

                                            Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                            a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                            feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                            helt heck (3) hek

                                            ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                            d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                            62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                            g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                            97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                            heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                            64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                            A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                            manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                            (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                            bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                            III)

                                            bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                            bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                            bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                            36

                                            Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                            Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                            VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                            ecc (3)

                                            FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                            GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                            gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                            HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                            hellthelt

                                            HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                            VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                            SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                            ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                            ſnere ſneɼe

                                            VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                            heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                            heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                            ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                            her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                            her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                            Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                            ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                            possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                            does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                            preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                            With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                            against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                            given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                            time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                            AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                            received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                            37

                                            richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                            when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                            65 NRA 52

                                            Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                            the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                            and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                            how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                            very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                            length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                            89)

                                            [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                            vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                            akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                            percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                            In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                            are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                            preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                            forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                            towards a distinctively short vowel

                                            66 GKS 2087 4to

                                            The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                            precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                            38

                                            manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                            one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                            continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                            the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                            short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                            class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                            Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                            according to Buergel (1904)

                                            Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                            Orthography N of Occurrences

                                            VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                            VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                            VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                            HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                            FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                            GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                            VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                            RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                            VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                            Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                            correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                            no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                            39

                                            67 AM 519a 4deg

                                            The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                            the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                            Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                            parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                            Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                            which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                            language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                            Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                            Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                            clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                            by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                            spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                            century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                            The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                            appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                            Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                            attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                            instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                            ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                            for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                            79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                            4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                            times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                            accent mark to denote vowel length

                                            40

                                            68 AM 132 fol

                                            The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                            (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                            included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                            as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                            seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                            Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                            and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                            that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                            secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                            an their spelling discussed below)

                                            Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                            faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                            feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                            (finginn)

                                            falla fell fellu fallinn

                                            feacutell feacutellu

                                            ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                            gingu (gingit)

                                            halda helt heldu haldinn

                                            heacutelt heacuteldu

                                            Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                            notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                            accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                            vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                            other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                            41

                                            are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                            ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                            Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                            ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                            Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                            Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                            occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                            (23819)

                                            But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                            diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                            halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                            preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                            without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                            times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                            neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                            [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                            preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                            times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                            an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                            nor accent mark

                                            Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                            diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                            hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                            do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                            expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                            here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                            heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                            42

                                            the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                            accent mark

                                            69 Summary

                                            To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                            texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                            short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                            similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                            largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                            characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                            in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                            in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                            subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                            has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                            the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                            of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                            Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                            always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                            the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                            diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                            as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                            short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                            (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                            with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                            only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                            will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                            reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                            43

                                            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                            language

                                            7 Conclusions

                                            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                            44

                                            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                            of Old English and Old High German

                                            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                            place

                                            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                            etc)

                                            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                            different processes

                                            45

                                            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                            subclass VIIc preterites)

                                            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                            its preterite forms

                                            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                            46

                                            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                            47

                                            8 Bibliography

                                            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                            48

                                            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                            109159-178

                                            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                            Hamburg

                                            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                            2009

                                            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                            Heidelberg

                                            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                            history Word 15 282-312

                                            49

                                            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                            Press Oxford

                                            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                            2333-47

                                            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                            50

                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                            Leiden University Press Leiden

                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                            Copenhagen

                                            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                            studie Gleerup Lund

                                            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                            Society of America Philadelphia

                                            51

                                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                            University Press Oxford

                                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                            (Saale)

                                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                            Society of America Washington DC

                                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                            Ruprecht

                                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                                            52

                                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                            Lingua 5289-123

                                            53

                                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                              5 On ē2 and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

                                              Class VII preterites such as heacutet and reacuteeth are usually reconstructed with

                                              Proto-Germanic ē2 a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of

                                              short e and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary ē (or ēsup1 lt PIE

                                              ē) There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes

                                              ēsup1 and ē2 must have had some more or less marked difference in

                                              quality Evidence for ēsup1 being rather a low-spread vowel perhaps better

                                              noted with ǣ have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (200220)

                                              that is evident from its later development to long ā in stressed syllables from

                                              the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels as when

                                              P[roto]G[ermanic] klibǣnan gt OHG klebēn Ger kleben to cleave to stick

                                              and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel ē is

                                              borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel ī [hellip] This sound-

                                              substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid

                                              vowel in Germanic

                                              According to Joumlrundur Hilmarson (1991) Proto-Germanic ē2 as a

                                              distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for here which he

                                              derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle ke (rather than from the

                                              instrumental singular kī) whose e was ldquoemphaticallyrdquo lengthened and

                                              to which an analogical -r was added In addition Joumlrundur Hilmarson

                                              assumes that ē2 was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs It

                                              is also found in some other minor instances most notably in Latin

                                              loanwords containing ē The phoneme is therefore a Germanic

                                              innovation and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs

                                              The attestation of Old Icelandic heacuter and that of VII class strong preterites

                                              does indeed have some important similarities which necessitated the

                                              21

                                              inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                              own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                              Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                              (199134)

                                              According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                              present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                              some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                              however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                              when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                              occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                              possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                              Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                              This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                              in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                              time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                              VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                              sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                              preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                              span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                              known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                              changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                              bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                              elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                              wit the present stem)

                                              bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                              lē2t-

                                              bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                              22

                                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                              But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                              elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                              the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                              Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                              Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                              retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                              elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                              amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                              lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                              haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                              tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                              time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                              been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                              no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                              being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                              The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                              an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                              that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                              discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                              recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                              particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                              of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                              cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                              Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                              strong verbs

                                              The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                              such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                              23

                                              change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                              Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                              instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                              been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                              subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                              orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                              Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                              j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                              very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                              class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                              only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                              result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                              such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                              e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                              Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                              (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                              particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                              (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                              long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                              is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                              regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                              generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                              occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                              frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                              Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                              Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                              hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                              adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                              24

                                              exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                              of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                              fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                              must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                              minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                              masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                              1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                              shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                              short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                              vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                              substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                              lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                              metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                              syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                              lengthening (1980118)

                                              Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                              neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                              affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                              lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                              apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                              vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                              Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                              the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                              be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                              to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                              archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                              phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                              possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                              25

                                              phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                              correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                              observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                              study that

                                              a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                              order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                              with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                              way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                              1972139)

                                              which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                              situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                              required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                              vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                              ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                              was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                              manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                              large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                              period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                              language well into the modern language

                                              Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                              trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                              verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                              that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                              analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                              ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                              prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                              how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                              26

                                              liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                              eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                              obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                              little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                              the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                              that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                              stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                              correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                              infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                              from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                              is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                              noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                              roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                              root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                              stems was likewise neutralised

                                              6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                              61 Introduction

                                              As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                              the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                              in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                              Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                              the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                              diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                              Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                              containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                              27

                                              which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                              Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                              here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                              contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                              glance

                                              The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                              earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                              is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                              has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                              phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                              considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                              gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                              mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                              marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                              a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                              ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                              evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                              vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                              are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                              to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                              monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                              vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                              in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                              In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                              mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                              scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                              (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                              28

                                              length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                              2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                              practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                              stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                              similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                              Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                              the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                              potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                              The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                              the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                              scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                              until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                              made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                              Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                              longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                              Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                              solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                              separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                              were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                              make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                              vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                              the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                              parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                              of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                              sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                              just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                              The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                              that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                              29

                                              more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                              manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                              because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                              for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                              testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                              small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                              written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                              its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                              like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                              widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                              practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                              harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                              In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                              Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                              century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                              has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                              (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                              the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                              used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                              systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                              non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                              extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                              It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                              graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                              Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                              and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                              encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                              etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                              30

                                              author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                              cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                              62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                              Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                              in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                              occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                              subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                              For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                              commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                              number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                              desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                              including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                              GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                              abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                              4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                              Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                              Grg)

                                              31

                                              Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                              237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                              VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                              (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                              heacutet heacutett

                                              het

                                              3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                              VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                              fexkfecc fecc

                                              FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                              GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                              gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                              (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                              gek geck gek

                                              HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                              heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                              HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                              VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                              SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                              ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                              3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                              Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                              her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                              her (2) her

                                              her (3) her (16)

                                              her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                              her her (3)

                                              In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                              once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                              other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                              person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                              overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                              between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                              6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                              32

                                              instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                              ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                              accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                              VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                              only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                              15 4to see below)

                                              63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                              One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                              so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                              about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                              extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                              scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                              orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                              that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                              20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                              hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                              been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                              scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                              popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                              Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                              but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                              several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                              the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                              time span between the writing of its single parts

                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                              mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                              33

                                              up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                              called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                              manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                              According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                              placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                              of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                              Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                              and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                              times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                              more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                              lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                              of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                              The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                              Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                              others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                              orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                              Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                              a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                              either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                              b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                              lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                              c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                              In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                              lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                              derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                              of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                              historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                              34

                                              kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                              development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                              [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                              always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                              manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                              Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                              spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                              would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                              bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                              with some instances of derounding to e

                                              bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                              lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                              reported 44 see table above)

                                              bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                              far the instances where it is absent

                                              bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                              diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                              35

                                              Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                              divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                              Weenen (2000)

                                              Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                              a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                              feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                              helt heck (3) hek

                                              ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                              d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                              62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                              g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                              97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                              heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                              64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                              A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                              manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                              (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                              bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                              III)

                                              bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                              bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                              bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                              36

                                              Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                              Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                              VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                              ecc (3)

                                              FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                              GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                              gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                              HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                              hellthelt

                                              HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                              VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                              SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                              ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                              ſnere ſneɼe

                                              VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                              heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                              heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                              ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                              her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                              her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                              Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                              ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                              possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                              does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                              preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                              With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                              against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                              given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                              time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                              AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                              received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                              37

                                              richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                              when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                              65 NRA 52

                                              Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                              the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                              and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                              how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                              very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                              length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                              89)

                                              [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                              vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                              akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                              percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                              In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                              are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                              preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                              forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                              towards a distinctively short vowel

                                              66 GKS 2087 4to

                                              The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                              precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                              38

                                              manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                              one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                              continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                              the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                              short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                              class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                              Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                              according to Buergel (1904)

                                              Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                              Orthography N of Occurrences

                                              VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                              VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                              VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                              HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                              FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                              GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                              VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                              RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                              VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                              Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                              correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                              no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                              39

                                              67 AM 519a 4deg

                                              The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                              the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                              Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                              parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                              Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                              which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                              language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                              Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                              Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                              clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                              by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                              spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                              century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                              The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                              appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                              Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                              attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                              instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                              ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                              for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                              79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                              4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                              times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                              accent mark to denote vowel length

                                              40

                                              68 AM 132 fol

                                              The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                              (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                              included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                              as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                              seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                              Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                              and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                              that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                              secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                              an their spelling discussed below)

                                              Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                              faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                              feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                              (finginn)

                                              falla fell fellu fallinn

                                              feacutell feacutellu

                                              ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                              gingu (gingit)

                                              halda helt heldu haldinn

                                              heacutelt heacuteldu

                                              Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                              notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                              accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                              vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                              other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                              41

                                              are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                              ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                              Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                              ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                              Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                              Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                              occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                              (23819)

                                              But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                              diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                              halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                              preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                              without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                              times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                              neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                              [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                              preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                              times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                              an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                              nor accent mark

                                              Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                              diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                              hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                              do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                              expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                              here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                              heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                              42

                                              the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                              accent mark

                                              69 Summary

                                              To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                              texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                              short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                              similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                              largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                              characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                              in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                              in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                              subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                              has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                              the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                              of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                              Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                              always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                              the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                              diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                              as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                              short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                              (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                              with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                              only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                              will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                              reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                              43

                                              spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                              language

                                              7 Conclusions

                                              As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                              (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                              attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                              of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                              singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                              Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                              to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                              likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                              which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                              root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                              vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                              syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                              are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                              produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                              Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                              of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                              VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                              long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                              preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                              chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                              may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                              obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                              reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                              44

                                              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                              of Old English and Old High German

                                              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                              place

                                              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                              etc)

                                              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                              different processes

                                              45

                                              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                              subclass VIIc preterites)

                                              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                              its preterite forms

                                              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                              46

                                              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                              47

                                              8 Bibliography

                                              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                              48

                                              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                              109159-178

                                              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                              Hamburg

                                              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                              2009

                                              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                              Heidelberg

                                              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                              history Word 15 282-312

                                              49

                                              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                              Press Oxford

                                              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                              2333-47

                                              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                              50

                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                              Leiden University Press Leiden

                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                              Copenhagen

                                              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                              studie Gleerup Lund

                                              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                              Society of America Philadelphia

                                              51

                                              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                              University Press Oxford

                                              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                              (Saale)

                                              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                              Society of America Washington DC

                                              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                              Ruprecht

                                              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                              maatschappij Amsterdam

                                              52

                                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                              Lingua 5289-123

                                              53

                                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                inclusion of the adverb in this present study Joumlrundur Hilmarson did his

                                                own survey of the orthographic manifestation of herheacuter on the Old

                                                Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm Perg 15 4to (about 1200) He states

                                                (199134)

                                                According to Hreinn Benediktsson (19676832 [in the bibliography of this

                                                present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90 of long vowels in

                                                some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark The adverb ldquohererdquo

                                                however when written in full has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences and

                                                when abbreviated it is written with a length mark only once out of 39

                                                occurrences This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic

                                                possessed not only the form heacuter as usually posited and preserved in Modern

                                                Icelandic but also the form her with a short vowel [hellip]

                                                This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of e

                                                in Old Icelandic The attested length of the word here fluctuates for a

                                                time in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the

                                                VII class of strong verbs and its occurrence is directly observable in those

                                                sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating

                                                preterites Apparently there are several instances of ē2 over a longer time

                                                span and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is

                                                known According to Joumlrundur Hilmarsson (199139-40) the sound

                                                changes giving rise to ē2 apply to three cases

                                                bull Strong verbs of subclass VIIa he-hait- gt heacute-hāt- gt het- (haplologic

                                                elision of the root syllable) gt hē2t- (secondary lengthening analogy

                                                wit the present stem)

                                                bull Similarly in strong verbs of subclass VIId le-lē1t- gt leacute-lāt- gt let- gt

                                                lē2t-

                                                bull her gt hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

                                                22

                                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                                But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                                elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                                the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                                Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                                Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                                retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                                elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                                amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                                lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                                haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                                tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                                time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                                been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                                no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                                being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                                The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                                an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                                that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                                discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                                recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                                particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                                of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                                cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                                Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                                strong verbs

                                                The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                                such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                                23

                                                change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                                Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                                instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                                been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                                subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                                orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                                Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                                j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                                very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                                class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                                only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                                result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                                such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                                e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                                Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                                (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                                particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                                (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                                long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                                is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                                regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                                generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                                occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                                frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                                Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                                Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                                hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                                adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                                24

                                                exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                                of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                                fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                                must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                                minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                                masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                                1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                                shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                                short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                                vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                                substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                                lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                                metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                                syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                                lengthening (1980118)

                                                Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                                neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                                affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                                lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                                apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                                vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                                Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                                the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                                be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                                to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                                archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                                phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                                possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                                25

                                                phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                                correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                                observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                                study that

                                                a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                                order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                                with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                                way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                                1972139)

                                                which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                                situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                                required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                                vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                                ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                                was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                                manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                                large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                                period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                                language well into the modern language

                                                Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                                trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                                verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                                that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                                analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                                ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                                prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                                how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                                26

                                                liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                stems was likewise neutralised

                                                6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                61 Introduction

                                                As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                27

                                                which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                glance

                                                The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                28

                                                length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                29

                                                more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                30

                                                author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                Grg)

                                                31

                                                Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                heacutet heacutett

                                                het

                                                3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                fexkfecc fecc

                                                FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                gek geck gek

                                                HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                her (2) her

                                                her (3) her (16)

                                                her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                her her (3)

                                                In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                32

                                                instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                15 4to see below)

                                                63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                33

                                                up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                34

                                                kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                with some instances of derounding to e

                                                bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                reported 44 see table above)

                                                bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                far the instances where it is absent

                                                bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                35

                                                Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                Weenen (2000)

                                                Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                helt heck (3) hek

                                                ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                III)

                                                bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                36

                                                Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                ecc (3)

                                                FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                hellthelt

                                                HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                ſnere ſneɼe

                                                VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                37

                                                richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                65 NRA 52

                                                Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                89)

                                                [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                38

                                                manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                according to Buergel (1904)

                                                Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                39

                                                67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                40

                                                68 AM 132 fol

                                                The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                an their spelling discussed below)

                                                Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                (finginn)

                                                falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                feacutell feacutellu

                                                ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                gingu (gingit)

                                                halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                41

                                                are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                (23819)

                                                But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                nor accent mark

                                                Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                42

                                                the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                accent mark

                                                69 Summary

                                                To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                43

                                                spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                language

                                                7 Conclusions

                                                As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                44

                                                Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                of Old English and Old High German

                                                Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                place

                                                a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                etc)

                                                b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                different processes

                                                45

                                                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                its preterite forms

                                                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                46

                                                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                47

                                                8 Bibliography

                                                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                48

                                                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                109159-178

                                                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                Hamburg

                                                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                2009

                                                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                Heidelberg

                                                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                history Word 15 282-312

                                                49

                                                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                Press Oxford

                                                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                2333-47

                                                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                50

                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                Copenhagen

                                                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                studie Gleerup Lund

                                                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                Society of America Philadelphia

                                                51

                                                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                University Press Oxford

                                                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                (Saale)

                                                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                Society of America Washington DC

                                                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                Ruprecht

                                                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                52

                                                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                Lingua 5289-123

                                                53

                                                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsons theory is not far from Jasanoffs compression theory

                                                  But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the

                                                  elision of the root vowel the first employs haplology in order to eliminate

                                                  the whole root syllable While on one hand this could very well apply to

                                                  Old Norse on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as

                                                  Anglian heht reord and leort constitute a difficult problem as they seem to

                                                  retain clear traces of the root syllable which could therefore not have been

                                                  elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007245) Moreover a reasonable

                                                  amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic

                                                  lengthening and most importantly haplology in the latter case elision by

                                                  haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological

                                                  tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the

                                                  time The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had

                                                  been made obscure by independent sound changes although it was clearly

                                                  no longer productive morphological reduplication must have been liable of

                                                  being fully analysed as such but for some reason it simply was not

                                                  The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside however there seems to be

                                                  an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above in

                                                  that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the

                                                  discussed preterites and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual

                                                  recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages In Old Icelandic in

                                                  particular there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence

                                                  of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs but also in a number of other

                                                  cases These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity

                                                  Shift on they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII

                                                  strong verbs

                                                  The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves e gt [je] in words

                                                  such as eacuteg eacuteta eacutel heacuteri heacuteraeth heacuteethan Heacuteethinn occurring long before the

                                                  23

                                                  change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                                  Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                                  instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                                  been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                                  subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                                  orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                                  Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                                  j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                                  very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                                  class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                                  only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                                  result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                                  such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                                  e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                                  Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                                  (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                                  particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                                  (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                                  long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                                  is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                                  regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                                  generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                                  occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                                  frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                                  Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                                  Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                                  hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                                  adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                                  24

                                                  exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                                  of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                                  fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                                  must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                                  minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                                  masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                                  1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                                  shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                                  short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                                  vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                                  substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                                  lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                                  metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                                  syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                                  lengthening (1980118)

                                                  Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                                  neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                                  affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                                  lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                                  apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                                  vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                                  Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                                  the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                                  be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                                  to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                                  archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                                  phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                                  possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                                  25

                                                  phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                                  correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                                  observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                                  study that

                                                  a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                                  order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                                  with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                                  way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                                  1972139)

                                                  which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                                  situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                                  required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                                  vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                                  ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                                  was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                                  manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                                  large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                                  period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                                  language well into the modern language

                                                  Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                                  trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                                  verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                                  that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                                  analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                                  ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                                  prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                                  how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                                  26

                                                  liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                  eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                  obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                  little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                  the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                  that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                  stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                  correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                  infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                  from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                  is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                  noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                  roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                  root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                  stems was likewise neutralised

                                                  6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                  61 Introduction

                                                  As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                  the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                  in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                  Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                  the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                  diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                  Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                  containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                  27

                                                  which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                  Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                  here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                  contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                  glance

                                                  The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                  earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                  is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                  has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                  phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                  considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                  gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                  mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                  marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                  a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                  ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                  evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                  vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                  are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                  to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                  monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                  vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                  in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                  In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                  mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                  scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                  (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                  28

                                                  length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                  2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                  practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                  stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                  similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                  Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                  the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                  potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                  The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                  the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                  scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                  until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                  made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                  Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                  longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                  Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                  solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                  separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                  were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                  make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                  vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                  the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                  parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                  of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                  sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                  just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                  The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                  that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                  29

                                                  more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                  manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                  because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                  for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                  testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                  small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                  written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                  its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                  like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                  widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                  practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                  harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                  In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                  Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                  century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                  has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                  (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                  the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                  used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                  systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                  non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                  extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                  It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                  graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                  Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                  and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                  encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                  etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                  30

                                                  author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                  cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                  62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                  Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                  in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                  occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                  subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                  For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                  commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                  number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                  desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                  including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                  GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                  abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                  4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                  Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                  Grg)

                                                  31

                                                  Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                  237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                  VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                  (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                  heacutet heacutett

                                                  het

                                                  3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                  VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                  fexkfecc fecc

                                                  FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                  GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                  gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                  (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                  gek geck gek

                                                  HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                  heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                  HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                  VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                  SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                  ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                  3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                  Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                  her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                  her (2) her

                                                  her (3) her (16)

                                                  her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                  her her (3)

                                                  In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                  once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                  other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                  person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                  overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                  between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                  6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                  32

                                                  instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                  ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                  accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                  VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                  only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                  15 4to see below)

                                                  63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                  One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                  so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                  about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                  extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                  scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                  orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                  that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                  20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                  hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                  been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                  scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                  popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                  Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                  but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                  several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                  the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                  time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                  mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                  33

                                                  up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                  called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                  manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                  According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                  placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                  of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                  Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                  and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                  times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                  more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                  lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                  of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                  The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                  Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                  others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                  orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                  Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                  a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                  either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                  b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                  lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                  c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                  In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                  lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                  derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                  of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                  historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                  34

                                                  kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                  development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                  [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                  always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                  manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                  Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                  spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                  would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                  bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                  with some instances of derounding to e

                                                  bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                  lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                  reported 44 see table above)

                                                  bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                  far the instances where it is absent

                                                  bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                  diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                  35

                                                  Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                  divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                  Weenen (2000)

                                                  Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                  a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                  feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                  helt heck (3) hek

                                                  ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                  d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                  62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                  g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                  97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                  heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                  64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                  A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                  manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                  (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                  bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                  III)

                                                  bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                  bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                  bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                  36

                                                  Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                  Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                  VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                  ecc (3)

                                                  FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                  GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                  gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                  HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                  hellthelt

                                                  HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                  VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                  SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                  ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                  ſnere ſneɼe

                                                  VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                  heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                  heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                  ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                  her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                  her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                  Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                  ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                  possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                  does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                  preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                  With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                  against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                  given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                  time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                  AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                  received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                  37

                                                  richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                  when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                  65 NRA 52

                                                  Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                  the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                  and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                  how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                  very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                  length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                  89)

                                                  [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                  vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                  akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                  percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                  In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                  are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                  preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                  forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                  towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                  66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                  The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                  precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                  38

                                                  manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                  one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                  continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                  the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                  short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                  class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                  Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                  according to Buergel (1904)

                                                  Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                  Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                  VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                  VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                  VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                  HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                  FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                  GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                  VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                  RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                  VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                  Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                  correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                  no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                  39

                                                  67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                  The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                  the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                  Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                  parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                  Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                  which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                  language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                  Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                  Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                  clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                  by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                  spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                  century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                  The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                  appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                  Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                  attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                  instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                  ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                  for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                  79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                  4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                  times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                  accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                  40

                                                  68 AM 132 fol

                                                  The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                  (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                  included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                  as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                  seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                  Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                  and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                  that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                  secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                  an their spelling discussed below)

                                                  Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                  faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                  feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                  (finginn)

                                                  falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                  feacutell feacutellu

                                                  ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                  gingu (gingit)

                                                  halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                  heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                  Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                  notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                  accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                  vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                  other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                  41

                                                  are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                  ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                  Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                  ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                  Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                  Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                  occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                  (23819)

                                                  But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                  diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                  halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                  preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                  without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                  times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                  neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                  [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                  preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                  times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                  an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                  nor accent mark

                                                  Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                  diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                  hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                  do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                  expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                  here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                  heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                  42

                                                  the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                  accent mark

                                                  69 Summary

                                                  To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                  texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                  short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                  similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                  largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                  characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                  in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                  in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                  subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                  has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                  the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                  of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                  Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                  always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                  the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                  diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                  as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                  short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                  (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                  with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                  only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                  will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                  reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                  43

                                                  spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                  language

                                                  7 Conclusions

                                                  As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                  (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                  attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                  of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                  singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                  Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                  to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                  likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                  which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                  root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                  vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                  syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                  are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                  produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                  Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                  of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                  VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                  long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                  preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                  chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                  may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                  obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                  reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                  44

                                                  Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                  of Old English and Old High German

                                                  Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                  several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                  e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                  being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                  the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                  without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                  primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                  neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                  preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                  monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                  and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                  subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                  Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                  place

                                                  a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                  long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                  etc)

                                                  b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                  short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                  neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                  Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                  different processes

                                                  45

                                                  c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                  subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                  d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                  its preterite forms

                                                  e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                  adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                  extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                  Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                  diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                  process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                  typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                  syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                  CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                  CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                  across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                  forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                  diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                  [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                  1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                  [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                  diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                  heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                  gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                  Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                  blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                  Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                  diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                  46

                                                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                  47

                                                  8 Bibliography

                                                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                  48

                                                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                  109159-178

                                                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                  Hamburg

                                                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                  2009

                                                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                  Heidelberg

                                                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                  history Word 15 282-312

                                                  49

                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                  Press Oxford

                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                  2333-47

                                                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                  50

                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                  Copenhagen

                                                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                  studie Gleerup Lund

                                                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                  Society of America Philadelphia

                                                  51

                                                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                  University Press Oxford

                                                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                  (Saale)

                                                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                  Society of America Washington DC

                                                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                  Ruprecht

                                                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                  52

                                                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                  Lingua 5289-123

                                                  53

                                                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                    change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Bjoumlrn

                                                    Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b223 manuscript sources start reading ltiegt in such

                                                    instances from around 1300) The sound change behind these instances has

                                                    been explained in several different ways and very often as lengthening with

                                                    subsequent diphthongisation whereas both the etymological and

                                                    orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel

                                                    Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or

                                                    j-infix (cf discussion by Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009) which in itself is not

                                                    very explanatory Theories of the origin of [je] in eacuteg eacuteta etc often include

                                                    class VII strong preterites while it is evident that we are dealing with not

                                                    only two but more separate phenomena which however produce the same

                                                    result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations In words

                                                    such as heacuteraeth heacuteethan and the personal name Heacuteethinn for example the change

                                                    e gt [je] is triggered by the word-initial h and affects e as from Proto-

                                                    Germanic (not resulting from earlier aelig from i-mutated short a)

                                                    (Noreen 192395) To class V preterite eacuteta on the other hand possibly a

                                                    particular analogical change applies triggered by the preterite singular aacutet

                                                    (quite exceptionally both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a

                                                    long vowel from a lengthened ablaut grade ē1t-) Finally the adverb heacuter

                                                    is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional prosody-

                                                    regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply and later become

                                                    generalised These instances albeit not numerous are crucial for the

                                                    occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly

                                                    frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation

                                                    Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

                                                    Quantity Shift this time analogical affecting shortened vowels in originally

                                                    hyper-characterised syllables This change is limited to the nominal and

                                                    adjectival domain and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

                                                    24

                                                    exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                                    of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                                    fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                                    must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                                    minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                                    masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                                    1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                                    shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                                    short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                                    vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                                    substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                                    lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                                    metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                                    syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                                    lengthening (1980118)

                                                    Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                                    neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                                    affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                                    lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                                    apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                                    vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                                    Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                                    the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                                    be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                                    to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                                    archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                                    phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                                    possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                                    25

                                                    phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                                    correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                                    observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                                    study that

                                                    a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                                    order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                                    with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                                    way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                                    1972139)

                                                    which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                                    situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                                    required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                                    vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                                    ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                                    was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                                    manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                                    large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                                    period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                                    language well into the modern language

                                                    Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                                    trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                                    verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                                    that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                                    analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                                    ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                                    prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                                    how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                                    26

                                                    liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                    eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                    obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                    little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                    the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                    that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                    stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                    correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                    infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                    from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                    is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                    noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                    roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                    root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                    stems was likewise neutralised

                                                    6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                    61 Introduction

                                                    As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                    the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                    in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                    Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                    the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                    diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                    Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                    containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                    27

                                                    which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                    Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                    here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                    contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                    glance

                                                    The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                    earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                    is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                    has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                    phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                    considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                    gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                    mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                    marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                    a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                    ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                    evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                    vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                    are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                    to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                    monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                    vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                    in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                    In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                    mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                    scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                    (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                    28

                                                    length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                    2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                    practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                    stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                    similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                    Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                    the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                    potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                    The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                    the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                    scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                    until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                    made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                    Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                    longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                    Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                    solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                    separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                    were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                    make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                    vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                    the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                    parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                    of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                    sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                    just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                    The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                    that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                    29

                                                    more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                    manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                    because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                    for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                    testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                    small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                    written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                    its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                    like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                    widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                    practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                    harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                    In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                    Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                    century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                    has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                    (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                    the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                    used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                    systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                    non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                    extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                    It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                    graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                    Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                    and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                    encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                    etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                    30

                                                    author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                    cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                    62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                    Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                    in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                    occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                    subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                    For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                    commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                    number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                    desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                    including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                    GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                    abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                    4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                    Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                    Grg)

                                                    31

                                                    Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                    237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                    VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                    (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                    heacutet heacutett

                                                    het

                                                    3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                    VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                    fexkfecc fecc

                                                    FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                    GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                    gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                    (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                    gek geck gek

                                                    HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                    heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                    HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                    VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                    SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                    ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                    3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                    Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                    her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                    her (2) her

                                                    her (3) her (16)

                                                    her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                    her her (3)

                                                    In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                    once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                    other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                    person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                    overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                    between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                    6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                    32

                                                    instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                    ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                    accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                    VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                    only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                    15 4to see below)

                                                    63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                    One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                    so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                    about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                    extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                    scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                    orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                    that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                    20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                    hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                    been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                    scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                    popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                    Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                    but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                    several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                    the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                    time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                    mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                    33

                                                    up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                    called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                    manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                    According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                    placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                    of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                    Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                    and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                    times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                    more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                    lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                    of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                    The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                    Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                    others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                    orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                    Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                    a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                    either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                    b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                    lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                    c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                    In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                    lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                    derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                    of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                    historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                    34

                                                    kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                    development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                    [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                    always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                    manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                    Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                    spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                    would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                    bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                    with some instances of derounding to e

                                                    bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                    lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                    reported 44 see table above)

                                                    bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                    far the instances where it is absent

                                                    bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                    diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                    35

                                                    Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                    divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                    Weenen (2000)

                                                    Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                    a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                    feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                    helt heck (3) hek

                                                    ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                    d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                    62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                    g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                    97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                    heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                    A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                    manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                    (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                    bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                    III)

                                                    bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                    bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                    bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                    36

                                                    Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                    Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                    VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                    ecc (3)

                                                    FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                    GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                    gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                    HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                    hellthelt

                                                    HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                    VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                    SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                    ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                    ſnere ſneɼe

                                                    VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                    heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                    heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                    ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                    her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                    her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                    Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                    ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                    possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                    does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                    preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                    With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                    against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                    given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                    time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                    AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                    received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                    37

                                                    richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                    when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                    65 NRA 52

                                                    Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                    the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                    and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                    how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                    very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                    length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                    89)

                                                    [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                    vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                    akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                    percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                    In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                    are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                    preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                    forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                    towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                    66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                    The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                    precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                    38

                                                    manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                    one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                    continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                    the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                    short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                    class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                    Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                    according to Buergel (1904)

                                                    Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                    Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                    VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                    VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                    VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                    HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                    FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                    GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                    VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                    RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                    VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                    Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                    correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                    no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                    39

                                                    67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                    accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                    40

                                                    68 AM 132 fol

                                                    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                    an their spelling discussed below)

                                                    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                    feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                    (finginn)

                                                    falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                    feacutell feacutellu

                                                    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                    gingu (gingit)

                                                    halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                    heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                    41

                                                    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                    (23819)

                                                    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                    nor accent mark

                                                    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                    42

                                                    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                    accent mark

                                                    69 Summary

                                                    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                    43

                                                    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                    language

                                                    7 Conclusions

                                                    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                    44

                                                    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                    of Old English and Old High German

                                                    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                    place

                                                    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                    etc)

                                                    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                    different processes

                                                    45

                                                    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                    subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                    its preterite forms

                                                    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                    46

                                                    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                    47

                                                    8 Bibliography

                                                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                    48

                                                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                    109159-178

                                                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                    Hamburg

                                                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                    2009

                                                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                    Heidelberg

                                                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                    history Word 15 282-312

                                                    49

                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                    Press Oxford

                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                    2333-47

                                                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                    50

                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                    Copenhagen

                                                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                    studie Gleerup Lund

                                                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                    Society of America Philadelphia

                                                    51

                                                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                    University Press Oxford

                                                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                    (Saale)

                                                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                    Society of America Washington DC

                                                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                    Ruprecht

                                                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                    52

                                                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                    Lingua 5289-123

                                                    53

                                                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                      exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration

                                                      of the vowels Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjoacutett

                                                      fljoacutett braacutett which developed an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo from an o that

                                                      must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ goacuteethur and

                                                      minn ~ miacuten) because of the evident morphological relationship with their

                                                      masculine and feminine equivalents which all had oacute (Kristjaacuten Aacuternason

                                                      1980116-118) According to Kristjaacuten Aacuternason one could also consider the

                                                      shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original

                                                      short ones so that they could be classified as short allophones of long

                                                      vowels (ibid) It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to

                                                      substantiate ie there I no way to find out whether there ever was a

                                                      lengthening before the diphthongisation because the only valuable sorce

                                                      metrics does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised

                                                      syllables Clearly Kristjaacuten Aacuternason excludes that there ever was any

                                                      lengthening (1980118)

                                                      Furthermore there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

                                                      neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic although

                                                      affecting very specific instances In monosyllables where a compensatory

                                                      lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place the vowel is sometimes

                                                      apparently noted as short before junctures (notably in the imperative se thorno

                                                      vs seacutethorno (you) see and the phrase Gothornroslashthorne vs goacutethorn roslashthorne in the First

                                                      Grammatical Treatise 863-5) Hreinn Benediktsson (1972138) explains

                                                      the incongruence as not being an actual shortening for which there would

                                                      be no comparable cases but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised

                                                      to a point in which the vowel segments in this case taking on the value of

                                                      archiphonemes were perceived as neither long nor short This

                                                      phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation with the

                                                      possibility that the ldquoactual length was more similar to that of the

                                                      25

                                                      phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                                      correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                                      observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                                      study that

                                                      a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                                      order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                                      with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                                      way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                                      1972139)

                                                      which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                                      situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                                      required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                                      vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                                      ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                                      was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                                      manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                                      large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                                      period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                                      language well into the modern language

                                                      Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                                      trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                                      verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                                      that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                                      analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                                      ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                                      prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                                      how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                                      26

                                                      liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                      eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                      obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                      little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                      the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                      that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                      stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                      correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                      infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                      from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                      is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                      noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                      roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                      root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                      stems was likewise neutralised

                                                      6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                      61 Introduction

                                                      As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                      the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                      in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                      Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                      the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                      diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                      Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                      containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                      27

                                                      which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                      Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                      here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                      contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                      glance

                                                      The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                      earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                      is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                      has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                      phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                      considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                      gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                      mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                      marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                      a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                      ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                      evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                      vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                      are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                      to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                      monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                      vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                      in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                      In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                      mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                      scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                      (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                      28

                                                      length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                      2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                      practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                      stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                      similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                      Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                      the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                      potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                      The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                      the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                      scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                      until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                      made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                      Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                      longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                      Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                      solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                      separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                      were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                      make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                      vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                      the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                      parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                      of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                      sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                      just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                      The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                      that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                      29

                                                      more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                      manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                      because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                      for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                      testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                      small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                      written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                      its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                      like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                      widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                      practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                      harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                      In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                      Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                      century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                      has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                      (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                      the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                      used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                      systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                      non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                      extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                      It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                      graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                      Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                      and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                      encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                      etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                      30

                                                      author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                      cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                      62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                      Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                      in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                      occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                      subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                      For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                      commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                      number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                      desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                      including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                      GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                      abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                      4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                      Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                      Grg)

                                                      31

                                                      Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                      237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                      VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                      (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                      heacutet heacutett

                                                      het

                                                      3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                      VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                      fexkfecc fecc

                                                      FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                      GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                      gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                      (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                      gek geck gek

                                                      HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                      heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                      HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                      VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                      SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                      ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                      3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                      Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                      her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                      her (2) her

                                                      her (3) her (16)

                                                      her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                      her her (3)

                                                      In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                      once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                      other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                      person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                      overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                      between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                      6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                      32

                                                      instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                      ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                      accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                      VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                      only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                      15 4to see below)

                                                      63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                      One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                      so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                      about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                      extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                      scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                      orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                      that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                      20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                      hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                      been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                      scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                      popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                      Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                      but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                      several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                      the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                      time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                      mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                      33

                                                      up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                      called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                      manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                      According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                      placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                      of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                      Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                      and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                      times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                      more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                      lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                      of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                      The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                      Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                      others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                      orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                      Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                      a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                      either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                      b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                      lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                      c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                      In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                      lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                      derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                      of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                      historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                      34

                                                      kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                      development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                      [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                      always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                      manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                      Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                      spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                      would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                      bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                      with some instances of derounding to e

                                                      bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                      lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                      reported 44 see table above)

                                                      bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                      far the instances where it is absent

                                                      bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                      diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                      35

                                                      Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                      divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                      Weenen (2000)

                                                      Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                      a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                      feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                      helt heck (3) hek

                                                      ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                      d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                      62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                      g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                      97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                      heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                      A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                      manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                      (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                      bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                      III)

                                                      bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                      bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                      bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                      36

                                                      Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                      Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                      VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                      ecc (3)

                                                      FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                      GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                      gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                      HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                      hellthelt

                                                      HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                      VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                      SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                      ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                      ſnere ſneɼe

                                                      VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                      heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                      heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                      ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                      her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                      her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                      Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                      ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                      possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                      does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                      preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                      With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                      against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                      given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                      time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                      AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                      received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                      37

                                                      richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                      when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                      65 NRA 52

                                                      Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                      the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                      and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                      how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                      very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                      length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                      89)

                                                      [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                      vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                      akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                      percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                      In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                      are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                      preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                      forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                      towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                      66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                      The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                      precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                      38

                                                      manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                      one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                      continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                      the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                      short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                      class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                      Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                      according to Buergel (1904)

                                                      Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                      Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                      VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                      VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                      VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                      HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                      FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                      GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                      VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                      RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                      VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                      Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                      correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                      no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                      39

                                                      67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                      The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                      the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                      Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                      parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                      Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                      which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                      language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                      Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                      Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                      clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                      by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                      spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                      century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                      The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                      appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                      Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                      attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                      instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                      ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                      for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                      79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                      4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                      times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                      accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                      40

                                                      68 AM 132 fol

                                                      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                      an their spelling discussed below)

                                                      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                      feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                      (finginn)

                                                      falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                      feacutell feacutellu

                                                      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                      gingu (gingit)

                                                      halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                      heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                      41

                                                      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                      (23819)

                                                      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                      nor accent mark

                                                      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                      42

                                                      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                      accent mark

                                                      69 Summary

                                                      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                      43

                                                      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                      language

                                                      7 Conclusions

                                                      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                      44

                                                      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                      of Old English and Old High German

                                                      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                      place

                                                      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                      etc)

                                                      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                      different processes

                                                      45

                                                      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                      subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                      its preterite forms

                                                      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                      46

                                                      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                      47

                                                      8 Bibliography

                                                      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                      48

                                                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                      109159-178

                                                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                      Hamburg

                                                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                      2009

                                                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                      Heidelberg

                                                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                      history Word 15 282-312

                                                      49

                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                      Press Oxford

                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                      2333-47

                                                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                      50

                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                      Copenhagen

                                                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                      studie Gleerup Lund

                                                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                      Society of America Philadelphia

                                                      51

                                                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                      University Press Oxford

                                                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                      (Saale)

                                                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                      Society of America Washington DC

                                                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                      Ruprecht

                                                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                      52

                                                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                      Lingua 5289-123

                                                      53

                                                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                        phonemically short vowels ie of the negative term of the quantity

                                                        correlationrdquo (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972139) The implications of such

                                                        observation are manifold but one in particular is interesting for this present

                                                        study that

                                                        a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

                                                        order to account for the fact that the archiphonemes in spite of being identified

                                                        with the short phonemes in the twelfth century have later developed in the same

                                                        way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson

                                                        1972139)

                                                        which is to say they developed a diphthong (se gt [sje]) directly from a

                                                        situation of seemingly short vocalism without previously undergoing the

                                                        required lengthening This could definitely account for a further example of

                                                        vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech and

                                                        ultimately of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which if not surely short

                                                        was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain

                                                        manuscript tradition It profiles itself as a powerful trend initiated by a

                                                        large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long

                                                        period of time and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the

                                                        language well into the modern language

                                                        Hreinn Benediktssons neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

                                                        trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong

                                                        verb eacuteta Criticism is strong on this point Sturtevant (1953457) points out

                                                        that if eacuteta is an analogical form it would be the only example of such

                                                        analogy in the verbal system whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega

                                                        ~ vaacute fregna ~ fraacute remain unchanged There are at two main reasons why I

                                                        prefer analogy in this particular case One is that it is harder to demonstrate

                                                        how often a verb such as eacuteta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

                                                        26

                                                        liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                        eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                        obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                        little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                        the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                        that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                        stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                        correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                        infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                        from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                        is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                        noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                        roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                        root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                        stems was likewise neutralised

                                                        6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                        61 Introduction

                                                        As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                        the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                        in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                        Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                        the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                        diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                        Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                        containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                        27

                                                        which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                        Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                        here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                        contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                        glance

                                                        The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                        earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                        is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                        has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                        phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                        considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                        gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                        mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                        marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                        a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                        ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                        evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                        vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                        are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                        to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                        monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                        vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                        in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                        In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                        mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                        scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                        (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                        28

                                                        length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                        2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                        practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                        stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                        similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                        Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                        the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                        potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                        The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                        the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                        scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                        until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                        made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                        Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                        longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                        Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                        solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                        separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                        were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                        make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                        vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                        the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                        parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                        of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                        sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                        just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                        The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                        that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                        29

                                                        more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                        manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                        because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                        for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                        testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                        small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                        written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                        its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                        like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                        widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                        practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                        harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                        In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                        Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                        century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                        has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                        (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                        the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                        used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                        systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                        non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                        extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                        It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                        graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                        Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                        and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                        encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                        etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                        30

                                                        author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                        cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                        62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                        Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                        in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                        occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                        subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                        For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                        commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                        number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                        desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                        including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                        GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                        abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                        4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                        Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                        Grg)

                                                        31

                                                        Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                        237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                        VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                        (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                        heacutet heacutett

                                                        het

                                                        3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                        VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                        fexkfecc fecc

                                                        FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                        GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                        gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                        (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                        gek geck gek

                                                        HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                        heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                        HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                        VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                        SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                        ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                        3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                        Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                        her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                        her (2) her

                                                        her (3) her (16)

                                                        her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                        her her (3)

                                                        In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                        once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                        other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                        person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                        overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                        between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                        6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                        32

                                                        instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                        ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                        accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                        VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                        only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                        15 4to see below)

                                                        63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                        One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                        so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                        about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                        extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                        scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                        orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                        that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                        20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                        hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                        been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                        scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                        popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                        Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                        but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                        several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                        the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                        time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                        mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                        33

                                                        up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                        called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                        manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                        According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                        placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                        of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                        Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                        and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                        times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                        more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                        lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                        of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                        The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                        Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                        others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                        orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                        Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                        a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                        either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                        b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                        lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                        c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                        In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                        lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                        derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                        of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                        historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                        34

                                                        kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                        development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                        [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                        always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                        manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                        Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                        spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                        would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                        bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                        with some instances of derounding to e

                                                        bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                        lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                        reported 44 see table above)

                                                        bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                        far the instances where it is absent

                                                        bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                        diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                        35

                                                        Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                        divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                        Weenen (2000)

                                                        Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                        a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                        feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                        helt heck (3) hek

                                                        ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                        d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                        62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                        g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                        97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                        heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                        A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                        manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                        (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                        bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                        III)

                                                        bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                        bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                        bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                        36

                                                        Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                        Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                        VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                        ecc (3)

                                                        FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                        GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                        gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                        HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                        hellthelt

                                                        HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                        VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                        SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                        ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                        ſnere ſneɼe

                                                        VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                        heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                        heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                        ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                        her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                        her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                        Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                        ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                        possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                        does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                        preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                        With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                        against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                        given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                        time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                        AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                        received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                        37

                                                        richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                        when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                        65 NRA 52

                                                        Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                        the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                        and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                        how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                        very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                        length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                        89)

                                                        [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                        vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                        akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                        percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                        In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                        are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                        preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                        forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                        towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                        66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                        The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                        precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                        38

                                                        manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                        one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                        continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                        the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                        short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                        class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                        Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                        according to Buergel (1904)

                                                        Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                        Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                        VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                        VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                        VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                        HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                        FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                        GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                        VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                        RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                        VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                        Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                        correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                        no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                        39

                                                        67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                        The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                        the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                        Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                        parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                        Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                        which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                        language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                        Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                        Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                        clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                        by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                        spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                        century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                        The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                        appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                        Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                        attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                        instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                        ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                        for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                        79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                        4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                        times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                        accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                        40

                                                        68 AM 132 fol

                                                        The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                        (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                        included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                        as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                        seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                        Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                        and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                        that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                        secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                        an their spelling discussed below)

                                                        Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                        faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                        feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                        (finginn)

                                                        falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                        feacutell feacutellu

                                                        ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                        gingu (gingit)

                                                        halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                        heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                        Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                        notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                        accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                        vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                        other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                        41

                                                        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                        (23819)

                                                        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                        nor accent mark

                                                        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                        42

                                                        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                        accent mark

                                                        69 Summary

                                                        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                        43

                                                        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                        language

                                                        7 Conclusions

                                                        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                        44

                                                        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                        of Old English and Old High German

                                                        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                        place

                                                        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                        etc)

                                                        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                        different processes

                                                        45

                                                        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                        subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                        its preterite forms

                                                        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                        46

                                                        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                        47

                                                        8 Bibliography

                                                        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                        48

                                                        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                        109159-178

                                                        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                        Hamburg

                                                        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                        2009

                                                        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                        Heidelberg

                                                        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                        history Word 15 282-312

                                                        49

                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                        Press Oxford

                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                        2333-47

                                                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                        50

                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                        Copenhagen

                                                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                        studie Gleerup Lund

                                                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                        Society of America Philadelphia

                                                        51

                                                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                        University Press Oxford

                                                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                        (Saale)

                                                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                        Society of America Washington DC

                                                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                        Ruprecht

                                                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                        52

                                                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                        Lingua 5289-123

                                                        53

                                                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                          liable to be lengthened due to its initial position than it is for words such as

                                                          eacuteg and heacuter ie leaving the emphatic lengthening hypothesis and the

                                                          obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial h

                                                          little explanatory material is left but plain analogy The other one answers

                                                          the question as to what kind of analogy this may be taking into account

                                                          that preterites of the type of vaacute and fraacute are monosyllables ending with their

                                                          stem vowel and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity

                                                          correlation it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical

                                                          infinitive such as veacutega is impossible whereas the diphthongisation of eacuteta

                                                          from non-vowel-final aacutet is Also an analogy of the kind gaf aacutet gefa eacuteta

                                                          is not entirely out of the question Following this track it should also be

                                                          noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snuacutea

                                                          roacutea groacutea nuacutea saacute but also the displaced buacutea) show an unambiguous long

                                                          root vowel until late because in early Old Icelandic length in their present

                                                          stems was likewise neutralised

                                                          6 The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

                                                          61 Introduction

                                                          As discussed above there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

                                                          the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                          in Old Norse This calls for an inspection of the available sources ie early

                                                          Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century in order to shed some light on

                                                          the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length andor

                                                          diphthongisation of eacute Hreinn Benediktsson (196832) and later Kristjaacuten

                                                          Aacuternason (1980101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts

                                                          containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length of

                                                          27

                                                          which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                          Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                          here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                          contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                          glance

                                                          The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                          earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                          is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                          has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                          phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                          considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                          gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                          mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                          marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                          a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                          ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                          evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                          vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                          are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                          to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                          monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                          vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                          in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                          In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                          mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                          scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                          (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                          28

                                                          length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                          2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                          practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                          stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                          similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                          Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                          the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                          potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                          The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                          the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                          scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                          until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                          made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                          Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                          longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                          Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                          solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                          separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                          were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                          make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                          vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                          the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                          parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                          of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                          sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                          just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                          The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                          that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                          29

                                                          more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                          manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                          because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                          for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                          testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                          small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                          written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                          its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                          like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                          widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                          practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                          harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                          In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                          Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                          century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                          has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                          (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                          the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                          used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                          systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                          non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                          extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                          It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                          graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                          Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                          and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                          encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                          etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                          30

                                                          author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                          cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                          62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                          Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                          in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                          occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                          subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                          For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                          commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                          number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                          desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                          including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                          GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                          abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                          4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                          Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                          Grg)

                                                          31

                                                          Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                          237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                          VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                          (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                          heacutet heacutett

                                                          het

                                                          3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                          VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                          fexkfecc fecc

                                                          FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                          GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                          gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                          (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                          gek geck gek

                                                          HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                          heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                          HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                          VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                          SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                          ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                          3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                          Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                          her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                          her (2) her

                                                          her (3) her (16)

                                                          her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                          her her (3)

                                                          In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                          once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                          other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                          person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                          overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                          between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                          6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                          32

                                                          instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                          ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                          accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                          VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                          only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                          15 4to see below)

                                                          63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                          One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                          so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                          about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                          extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                          scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                          orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                          that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                          20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                          hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                          been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                          scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                          popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                          Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                          but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                          several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                          the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                          time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                          mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                          33

                                                          up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                          called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                          manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                          According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                          placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                          of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                          Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                          and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                          times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                          more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                          lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                          of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                          The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                          Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                          others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                          orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                          Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                          a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                          either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                          b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                          lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                          c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                          In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                          lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                          derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                          of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                          historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                          34

                                                          kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                          development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                          [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                          always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                          manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                          Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                          spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                          would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                          bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                          with some instances of derounding to e

                                                          bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                          lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                          reported 44 see table above)

                                                          bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                          far the instances where it is absent

                                                          bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                          diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                          35

                                                          Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                          divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                          Weenen (2000)

                                                          Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                          a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                          feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                          helt heck (3) hek

                                                          ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                          d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                          62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                          g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                          97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                          heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                          64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                          A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                          manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                          (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                          bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                          III)

                                                          bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                          bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                          bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                          36

                                                          Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                          Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                          VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                          ecc (3)

                                                          FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                          GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                          gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                          HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                          hellthelt

                                                          HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                          VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                          SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                          ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                          ſnere ſneɼe

                                                          VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                          heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                          heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                          ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                          her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                          her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                          Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                          ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                          possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                          does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                          preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                          With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                          against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                          given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                          time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                          AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                          received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                          37

                                                          richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                          when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                          65 NRA 52

                                                          Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                          the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                          and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                          how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                          very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                          length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                          89)

                                                          [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                          vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                          akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                          percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                          In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                          are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                          preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                          forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                          towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                          66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                          The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                          precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                          38

                                                          manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                          one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                          continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                          the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                          short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                          class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                          Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                          according to Buergel (1904)

                                                          Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                          Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                          VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                          VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                          VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                          HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                          FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                          GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                          VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                          RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                          VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                          Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                          correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                          no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                          39

                                                          67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                          The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                          the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                          Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                          parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                          Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                          which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                          language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                          Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                          Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                          clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                          by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                          spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                          century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                          The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                          appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                          Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                          attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                          instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                          ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                          for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                          79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                          4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                          times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                          accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                          40

                                                          68 AM 132 fol

                                                          The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                          (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                          included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                          as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                          seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                          Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                          and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                          that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                          secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                          an their spelling discussed below)

                                                          Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                          faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                          feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                          (finginn)

                                                          falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                          feacutell feacutellu

                                                          ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                          gingu (gingit)

                                                          halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                          heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                          Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                          notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                          accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                          vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                          other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                          41

                                                          are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                          ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                          Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                          ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                          Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                          Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                          occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                          (23819)

                                                          But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                          diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                          halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                          preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                          without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                          times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                          neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                          [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                          preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                          times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                          an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                          nor accent mark

                                                          Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                          diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                          hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                          do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                          expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                          here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                          heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                          42

                                                          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                          accent mark

                                                          69 Summary

                                                          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                          43

                                                          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                          language

                                                          7 Conclusions

                                                          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                          44

                                                          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                          of Old English and Old High German

                                                          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                          place

                                                          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                          etc)

                                                          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                          different processes

                                                          45

                                                          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                          subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                          its preterite forms

                                                          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                          46

                                                          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                          47

                                                          8 Bibliography

                                                          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                          48

                                                          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                          109159-178

                                                          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                          Hamburg

                                                          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                          2009

                                                          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                          Heidelberg

                                                          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                          history Word 15 282-312

                                                          49

                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                          Press Oxford

                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                          2333-47

                                                          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                          50

                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                          Copenhagen

                                                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                          studie Gleerup Lund

                                                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                          Society of America Philadelphia

                                                          51

                                                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                          University Press Oxford

                                                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                          (Saale)

                                                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                          Society of America Washington DC

                                                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                          Ruprecht

                                                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                          52

                                                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                          Lingua 5289-123

                                                          53

                                                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                            which only two are of considerable length These three manuscripts are

                                                            Holm perg 15 4to NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below) and

                                                            here well represented in this present study but admittedly they did not

                                                            contain many relevant examples as will become more evident from a closer

                                                            glance

                                                            The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts I the

                                                            earliest Icelandic manuscripts the principal means of denoting vowel length

                                                            is by means of the superscript acute accent mark However the acute mark

                                                            has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-

                                                            phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes

                                                            considerably in time and from scribe to scribe Some scholars have even

                                                            gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length

                                                            mark in any manuscript (Seip 195463) Its most common usages are a)

                                                            marking a words primary stress especially in words of foreign origin b) as

                                                            a diacritic for marking vowels especially on ltigt and ltygt (also noted as

                                                            ltijgt) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately

                                                            evolving into the dots over i and j) c) as a double mark on two adjacent

                                                            vowels it serves as diaeresis (cf Noreen 1913sect33) Other notable practices

                                                            are d) marking monosyllables such as aacute iacute oacuter ǫn etc evidently in order not

                                                            to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however the same

                                                            monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long unlike long

                                                            vowels in other contexts) e) marking vowel quality rather than quantity as

                                                            in ltoacutegt for ǫ or oslash and lteacutegt for ę (Seip 195463)

                                                            In spite of this it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

                                                            mark is a quantitative one ie of marking vowel length especially as a

                                                            scribal practice which gets established over time According to Lindblad

                                                            (1952133-138) it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

                                                            28

                                                            length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                            2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                            practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                            stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                            similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                            Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                            the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                            potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                            The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                            the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                            scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                            until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                            made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                            Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                            longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                            Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                            solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                            separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                            were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                            make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                            vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                            the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                            parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                            of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                            sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                            just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                            The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                            that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                            29

                                                            more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                            manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                            because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                            for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                            testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                            small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                            written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                            its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                            like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                            widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                            practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                            harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                            In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                            Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                            century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                            has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                            (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                            the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                            used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                            systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                            non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                            extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                            It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                            graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                            Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                            and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                            encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                            etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                            30

                                                            author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                            cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                            62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                            Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                            in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                            occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                            subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                            For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                            commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                            number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                            desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                            including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                            GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                            abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                            4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                            Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                            Grg)

                                                            31

                                                            Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                            237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                            VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                            (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                            heacutet heacutett

                                                            het

                                                            3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                            VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                            fexkfecc fecc

                                                            FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                            GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                            gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                            (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                            gek geck gek

                                                            HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                            heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                            HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                            VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                            SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                            ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                            3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                            Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                            her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                            her (2) her

                                                            her (3) her (16)

                                                            her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                            her her (3)

                                                            In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                            once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                            other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                            person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                            overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                            between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                            6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                            32

                                                            instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                            ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                            accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                            VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                            only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                            15 4to see below)

                                                            63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                            One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                            so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                            about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                            extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                            scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                            orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                            that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                            20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                            hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                            been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                            scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                            popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                            Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                            but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                            several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                            the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                            time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                            mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                            33

                                                            up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                            called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                            manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                            According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                            placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                            of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                            Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                            and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                            times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                            more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                            lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                            of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                            The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                            Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                            others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                            orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                            Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                            a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                            either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                            b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                            lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                            c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                            In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                            lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                            derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                            of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                            historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                            34

                                                            kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                            development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                            [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                            always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                            manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                            Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                            spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                            would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                            bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                            with some instances of derounding to e

                                                            bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                            lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                            reported 44 see table above)

                                                            bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                            far the instances where it is absent

                                                            bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                            diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                            35

                                                            Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                            divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                            Weenen (2000)

                                                            Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                            a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                            feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                            helt heck (3) hek

                                                            ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                            d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                            62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                            g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                            97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                            heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                            64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                            A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                            manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                            (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                            bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                            III)

                                                            bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                            bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                            bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                            36

                                                            Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                            Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                            VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                            ecc (3)

                                                            FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                            GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                            gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                            HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                            hellthelt

                                                            HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                            VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                            SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                            ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                            ſnere ſneɼe

                                                            VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                            heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                            heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                            ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                            her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                            her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                            Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                            ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                            possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                            does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                            preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                            With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                            against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                            given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                            time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                            AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                            received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                            37

                                                            richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                            when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                            65 NRA 52

                                                            Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                            the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                            and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                            how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                            very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                            length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                            89)

                                                            [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                            vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                            akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                            percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                            In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                            are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                            preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                            forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                            towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                            66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                            The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                            precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                            38

                                                            manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                            one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                            continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                            the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                            short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                            class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                            Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                            according to Buergel (1904)

                                                            Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                            Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                            VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                            VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                            VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                            HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                            FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                            GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                            VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                            RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                            VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                            Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                            correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                            no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                            39

                                                            67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                            The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                            the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                            Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                            parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                            Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                            which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                            language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                            Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                            Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                            clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                            by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                            spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                            century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                            The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                            appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                            Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                            attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                            instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                            ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                            for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                            79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                            4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                            times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                            accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                            40

                                                            68 AM 132 fol

                                                            The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                            (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                            included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                            as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                            seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                            Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                            and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                            that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                            secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                            an their spelling discussed below)

                                                            Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                            faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                            feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                            (finginn)

                                                            falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                            feacutell feacutellu

                                                            ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                            gingu (gingit)

                                                            halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                            heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                            Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                            notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                            accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                            vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                            other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                            41

                                                            are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                            ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                            Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                            ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                            Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                            Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                            occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                            (23819)

                                                            But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                            diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                            halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                            preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                            without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                            times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                            neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                            [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                            preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                            times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                            an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                            nor accent mark

                                                            Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                            diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                            hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                            do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                            expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                            here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                            heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                            42

                                                            the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                            accent mark

                                                            69 Summary

                                                            To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                            texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                            short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                            similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                            largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                            characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                            in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                            in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                            subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                            has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                            the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                            of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                            Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                            always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                            the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                            diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                            as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                            short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                            (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                            with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                            only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                            will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                            reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                            43

                                                            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                            language

                                                            7 Conclusions

                                                            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                            44

                                                            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                            of Old English and Old High German

                                                            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                            place

                                                            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                            etc)

                                                            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                            different processes

                                                            45

                                                            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                            subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                            its preterite forms

                                                            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                            46

                                                            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                            47

                                                            8 Bibliography

                                                            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                            48

                                                            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                            109159-178

                                                            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                            Hamburg

                                                            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                            2009

                                                            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                            Heidelberg

                                                            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                            history Word 15 282-312

                                                            49

                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                            Press Oxford

                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                            2333-47

                                                            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                            50

                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                            Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                            Copenhagen

                                                            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                            studie Gleerup Lund

                                                            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                            Society of America Philadelphia

                                                            51

                                                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                            University Press Oxford

                                                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                            (Saale)

                                                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                            Society of America Washington DC

                                                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                            Ruprecht

                                                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                            52

                                                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                            Lingua 5289-123

                                                            53

                                                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                              length-marking practice is best exemplified reaching peaks of 90 (GKS

                                                              2087 4to) while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14th century this

                                                              practice yields gradually to the graphical function with a transitional period

                                                              stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350 Notably in spite of the great

                                                              similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and

                                                              Norwegian written sources the exclusive and consequent employment of

                                                              the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script with

                                                              potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 195210-11)

                                                              The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which

                                                              the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic

                                                              scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes

                                                              until younger more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually

                                                              made their way to Iceland The anonymous author of the First Grammatical

                                                              Treatise recommends the use of a stroke for marking length (ldquomerkja ina

                                                              longu meeth stryki fraacute inum skommumrdquo 862-3 cf translation in Hreinn

                                                              Benediktsson 1972218-21) because he finds it more economic than the

                                                              solution employed by one of his models the Greek script which uses

                                                              separate graphemes for long vowels He is well aware of the fact that if he

                                                              were to devise a separate letter (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to

                                                              make order with he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six

                                                              vowels and twenty-eight consonants) Nonetheless he still wants to show

                                                              the distinction because ldquohon skiftir maacutelirdquo (862) Because of the lack of

                                                              parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria) and possibly because

                                                              of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind it is

                                                              sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea

                                                              just as the superscript dot denoting nasality among other innovations

                                                              The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise however if it ever was

                                                              that great does indeed fade away quite soon as Icelandic scribes become

                                                              29

                                                              more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                              manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                              because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                              for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                              testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                              small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                              written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                              its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                              like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                              widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                              practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                              harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                              In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                              Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                              century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                              has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                              (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                              the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                              used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                              systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                              non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                              extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                              It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                              graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                              Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                              and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                              encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                              etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                              30

                                                              author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                              cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                              62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                              Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                              in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                              occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                              subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                              For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                              commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                              number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                              desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                              including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                              GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                              abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                              4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                              Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                              Grg)

                                                              31

                                                              Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                              237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                              VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                              (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                              heacutet heacutett

                                                              het

                                                              3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                              VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                              fexkfecc fecc

                                                              FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                              GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                              gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                              (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                              gek geck gek

                                                              HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                              heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                              HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                              VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                              SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                              ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                              3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                              Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                              her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                              her (2) her

                                                              her (3) her (16)

                                                              her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                              her her (3)

                                                              In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                              once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                              other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                              person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                              overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                              between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                              6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                              32

                                                              instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                              ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                              accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                              VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                              only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                              15 4to see below)

                                                              63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                              One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                              so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                              about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                              extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                              scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                              orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                              that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                              20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                              hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                              been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                              scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                              popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                              Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                              but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                              several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                              the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                              time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                              mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                              33

                                                              up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                              called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                              manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                              According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                              placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                              of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                              Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                              and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                              times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                              more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                              lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                              of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                              The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                              Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                              others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                              orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                              Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                              a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                              either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                              b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                              lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                              c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                              In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                              lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                              derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                              of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                              historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                              34

                                                              kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                              development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                              [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                              always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                              manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                              Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                              spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                              would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                              bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                              with some instances of derounding to e

                                                              bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                              lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                              reported 44 see table above)

                                                              bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                              far the instances where it is absent

                                                              bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                              diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                              35

                                                              Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                              divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                              Weenen (2000)

                                                              Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                              a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                              feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                              helt heck (3) hek

                                                              ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                              d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                              62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                              g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                              97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                              heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                              64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                              A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                              manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                              (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                              bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                              III)

                                                              bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                              bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                              bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                              36

                                                              Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                              Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                              VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                              ecc (3)

                                                              FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                              GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                              gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                              HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                              hellthelt

                                                              HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                              VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                              SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                              ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                              ſnere ſneɼe

                                                              VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                              heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                              heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                              ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                              her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                              her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                              Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                              ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                              possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                              does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                              preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                              With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                              against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                              given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                              time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                              AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                              received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                              37

                                                              richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                              when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                              65 NRA 52

                                                              Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                              the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                              and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                              how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                              very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                              length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                              89)

                                                              [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                              vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                              akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                              percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                              In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                              are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                              preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                              forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                              towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                              66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                              The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                              precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                              38

                                                              manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                              one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                              continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                              the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                              short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                              class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                              Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                              according to Buergel (1904)

                                                              Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                              Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                              VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                              VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                              VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                              HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                              FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                              GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                              VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                              RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                              VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                              Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                              correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                              no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                              39

                                                              67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                              The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                              the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                              Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                              parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                              Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                              which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                              language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                              Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                              Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                              clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                              by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                              spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                              century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                              The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                              appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                              Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                              attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                              instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                              ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                              for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                              79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                              4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                              times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                              accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                              40

                                                              68 AM 132 fol

                                                              The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                              (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                              included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                              as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                              seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                              Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                              and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                              that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                              secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                              an their spelling discussed below)

                                                              Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                              faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                              feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                              (finginn)

                                                              falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                              feacutell feacutellu

                                                              ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                              gingu (gingit)

                                                              halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                              heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                              Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                              notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                              accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                              vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                              other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                              41

                                                              are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                              ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                              Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                              ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                              Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                              Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                              occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                              (23819)

                                                              But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                              diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                              halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                              preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                              without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                              times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                              neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                              [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                              preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                              times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                              an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                              nor accent mark

                                                              Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                              diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                              hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                              do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                              expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                              here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                              heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                              42

                                                              the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                              accent mark

                                                              69 Summary

                                                              To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                              texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                              short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                              similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                              largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                              characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                              in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                              in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                              subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                              has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                              the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                              of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                              Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                              always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                              the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                              diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                              as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                              short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                              (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                              with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                              only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                              will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                              reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                              43

                                                              spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                              language

                                                              7 Conclusions

                                                              As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                              (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                              attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                              of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                              singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                              Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                              to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                              likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                              which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                              root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                              vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                              syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                              are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                              produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                              Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                              of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                              VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                              long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                              preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                              chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                              may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                              obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                              reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                              44

                                                              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                              of Old English and Old High German

                                                              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                              place

                                                              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                              etc)

                                                              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                              different processes

                                                              45

                                                              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                              subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                              its preterite forms

                                                              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                              46

                                                              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                              47

                                                              8 Bibliography

                                                              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                              48

                                                              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                              109159-178

                                                              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                              Hamburg

                                                              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                              2009

                                                              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                              Heidelberg

                                                              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                              history Word 15 282-312

                                                              49

                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                              Press Oxford

                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                              2333-47

                                                              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                              50

                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                              Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                              Copenhagen

                                                              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                              studie Gleerup Lund

                                                              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                              Society of America Philadelphia

                                                              51

                                                              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                              University Press Oxford

                                                              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                              (Saale)

                                                              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                              Society of America Washington DC

                                                              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                              Ruprecht

                                                              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                              maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                              52

                                                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                              Lingua 5289-123

                                                              53

                                                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                more skilled and experienced Generally most of the early Old Icelandic

                                                                manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels

                                                                because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction as well as

                                                                for nasal and non-nasal vowels However the First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or possibly a

                                                                small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders but since it was probably

                                                                written long before any extant manuscript it is hard to establish how great

                                                                its influence really was at the time It is for instance possible that a norm

                                                                like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain

                                                                widespread acceptance in other words marking vowel length was good

                                                                practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading

                                                                harder (which does only rarely occur)

                                                                In fact early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf

                                                                Lindblad 195228ff) AM 237 a fol for example dated to the mid-12th

                                                                century shows 5 times lteacutegt and 4 of the instances are the word verk which

                                                                has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise) Riacutembegla

                                                                (GKS 1812 4to A) has lteacutegt standing for ę just like ltoacutegt stands for ǫ On

                                                                the other hand there is a good number of sources where the length mark is

                                                                used selectively and according to an inner logic for example it may be

                                                                systematically avoided on prepositions adverbs and other non-nominal and

                                                                non-verbal monosyllables but nonetheless its notation elsewhere can be

                                                                extremely precise although the statistics will not account for that

                                                                It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

                                                                graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old

                                                                Icelandic Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts

                                                                and in other orthographic-statistical surveys it is not uncommon to

                                                                encounter statements of the kind ldquolteacutegt appears in N instances of

                                                                etymological short vowelrdquo where it is hard to understand whether the

                                                                30

                                                                author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                                cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                                62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                                Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                                in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                                occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                                subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                                For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                                commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                                number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                                desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                                including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                                GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                                abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                                4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                                Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                                Grg)

                                                                31

                                                                Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                                237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                                VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                                (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                                heacutet heacutett

                                                                het

                                                                3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                                VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                                fexkfecc fecc

                                                                FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                                GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                                gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                                (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                                gek geck gek

                                                                HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                                heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                                HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                                VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                                SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                                ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                                3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                                Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                                her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                                her (2) her

                                                                her (3) her (16)

                                                                her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                                her her (3)

                                                                In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                                once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                                other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                                person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                                overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                                between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                                6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                                32

                                                                instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                                ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                                accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                                VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                                only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                                15 4to see below)

                                                                63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                                One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                                so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                                about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                                extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                                scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                                orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                                that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                                20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                                hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                                been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                                scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                                popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                                Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                                but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                                several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                                the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                                time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                                mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                                33

                                                                up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                                called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                                manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                                According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                                placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                                of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                                Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                                and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                                times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                                more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                                lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                                of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                                The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                                Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                                others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                                orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                                Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                                a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                                either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                                b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                                lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                                c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                                lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                                derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                                of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                                historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                                34

                                                                kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                reported 44 see table above)

                                                                bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                far the instances where it is absent

                                                                bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                35

                                                                Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                Weenen (2000)

                                                                Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                helt heck (3) hek

                                                                ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                III)

                                                                bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                36

                                                                Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                ecc (3)

                                                                FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                hellthelt

                                                                HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                37

                                                                richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                65 NRA 52

                                                                Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                89)

                                                                [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                38

                                                                manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                39

                                                                67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                40

                                                                68 AM 132 fol

                                                                The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                (finginn)

                                                                falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                feacutell feacutellu

                                                                ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                gingu (gingit)

                                                                halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                41

                                                                are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                (23819)

                                                                But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                nor accent mark

                                                                Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                42

                                                                the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                accent mark

                                                                69 Summary

                                                                To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                43

                                                                spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                language

                                                                7 Conclusions

                                                                As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                44

                                                                Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                of Old English and Old High German

                                                                Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                place

                                                                a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                etc)

                                                                b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                different processes

                                                                45

                                                                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                its preterite forms

                                                                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                46

                                                                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                47

                                                                8 Bibliography

                                                                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                48

                                                                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                109159-178

                                                                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                Hamburg

                                                                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                2009

                                                                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                Heidelberg

                                                                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                history Word 15 282-312

                                                                49

                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                Press Oxford

                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                2333-47

                                                                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                50

                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                Copenhagen

                                                                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                51

                                                                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                University Press Oxford

                                                                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                (Saale)

                                                                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                Society of America Washington DC

                                                                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                Ruprecht

                                                                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                52

                                                                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                Lingua 5289-123

                                                                53

                                                                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                  author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related

                                                                  cases originally had originally a short vowel or not

                                                                  62 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts Larsson (1981)

                                                                  Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon

                                                                  in the earliest manuscripts it appears clear that where the length mark

                                                                  occurs less often than it should when denoting length it is hardly used for

                                                                  subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites and almost never with the adverb heacuter

                                                                  For a comparison the table presented below also shows the figures for the

                                                                  commonest class VII verb heita It should also be mentioned that the

                                                                  number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as

                                                                  desirable The following information is found in Larssons lexicon (1891)

                                                                  including the following manuscripts AM 237 folio (abbr 237) Riacutembegla

                                                                  GKS 1812 4to (abbr Rb) Icelandic Homily Book (Holm Perg 4to no15

                                                                  abbr H) Physiologus Fragments (I II and III abbr Ph I II III in AM 673

                                                                  4to A) AM 645 4to (abbr 645) Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A abbr El)

                                                                  Placitusdraacutepa (AM 673 4to B abbr Pl) Graacutegaacutes (AM 315 folio D abbr

                                                                  Grg)

                                                                  31

                                                                  Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                                  237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                                  VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                                  (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                                  heacutet heacutett

                                                                  het

                                                                  3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                                  VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                                  fexkfecc fecc

                                                                  FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                                  GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                                  gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                                  (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                                  gek geck gek

                                                                  HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                                  heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                                  HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                                  VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                                  SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                                  ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                                  3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                                  Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                                  her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                                  her (2) her

                                                                  her (3) her (16)

                                                                  her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                                  her her (3)

                                                                  In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                                  once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                                  other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                                  person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                                  overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                                  between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                                  6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                                  32

                                                                  instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                                  ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                                  accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                                  VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                                  only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                                  15 4to see below)

                                                                  63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                                  One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                                  so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                                  about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                                  extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                                  scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                                  orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                                  that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                                  20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                                  hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                                  been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                                  scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                                  popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                                  Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                                  but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                                  several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                                  the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                                  time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                                  mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                                  33

                                                                  up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                                  called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                                  manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                                  According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                                  placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                                  of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                                  Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                                  and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                                  times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                                  more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                                  lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                                  of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                                  The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                                  Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                                  others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                                  orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                                  Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                                  a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                                  either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                                  b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                                  lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                                  c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                  In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                                  lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                                  derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                                  of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                                  historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                                  34

                                                                  kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                  development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                  [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                  always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                  manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                  Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                  spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                  would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                  bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                  with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                  bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                  lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                  reported 44 see table above)

                                                                  bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                  far the instances where it is absent

                                                                  bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                  diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                  35

                                                                  Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                  divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                  Weenen (2000)

                                                                  Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                  a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                  feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                  helt heck (3) hek

                                                                  ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                  d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                  62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                  g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                  97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                  heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                  64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                  A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                  manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                  (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                  bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                  III)

                                                                  bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                  bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                  bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                  36

                                                                  Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                  Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                  VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                  ecc (3)

                                                                  FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                  GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                  gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                  HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                  hellthelt

                                                                  HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                  VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                  SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                  ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                  ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                  VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                  heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                  heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                  ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                  her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                  her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                  Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                  ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                  possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                  does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                  preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                  With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                  against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                  given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                  time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                  AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                  received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                  37

                                                                  richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                  when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                  65 NRA 52

                                                                  Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                  the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                  and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                  how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                  very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                  length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                  89)

                                                                  [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                  vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                  akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                  percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                  In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                  are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                  preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                  forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                  towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                  66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                  The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                  precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                  38

                                                                  manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                  one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                  continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                  the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                  short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                  class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                  Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                  according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                  Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                  Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                  VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                  VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                  VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                  HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                  FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                  GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                  VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                  RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                  VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                  Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                  correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                  no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                  39

                                                                  67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                  The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                  the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                  Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                  parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                  Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                  which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                  language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                  Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                  Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                  clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                  by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                  spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                  century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                  The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                  appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                  Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                  attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                  instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                  ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                  for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                  79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                  4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                  times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                  accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                  40

                                                                  68 AM 132 fol

                                                                  The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                  (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                  included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                  as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                  seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                  Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                  and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                  that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                  secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                  an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                  Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                  faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                  feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                  (finginn)

                                                                  falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                  feacutell feacutellu

                                                                  ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                  gingu (gingit)

                                                                  halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                  heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                  Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                  notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                  accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                  vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                  other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                  41

                                                                  are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                  ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                  Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                  ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                  Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                  Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                  occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                  (23819)

                                                                  But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                  diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                  halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                  preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                  without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                  times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                  neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                  [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                  preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                  times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                  an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                  nor accent mark

                                                                  Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                  diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                  hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                  do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                  expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                  here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                  heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                  42

                                                                  the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                  accent mark

                                                                  69 Summary

                                                                  To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                  texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                  short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                  similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                  largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                  characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                  in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                  in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                  subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                  has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                  the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                  of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                  Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                  always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                  the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                  diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                  as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                  short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                  (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                  with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                  only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                  will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                  reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                  43

                                                                  spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                  language

                                                                  7 Conclusions

                                                                  As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                  (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                  attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                  of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                  singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                  Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                  to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                  likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                  which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                  root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                  vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                  syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                  are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                  produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                  Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                  of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                  VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                  long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                  preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                  chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                  may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                  obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                  reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                  44

                                                                  Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                  of Old English and Old High German

                                                                  Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                  several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                  e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                  being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                  the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                  without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                  primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                  neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                  preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                  monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                  and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                  subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                  Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                  place

                                                                  a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                  long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                  etc)

                                                                  b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                  short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                  neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                  Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                  different processes

                                                                  45

                                                                  c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                  subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                  d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                  its preterite forms

                                                                  e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                  adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                  extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                  Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                  diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                  process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                  typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                  syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                  CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                  CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                  across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                  forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                  diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                  [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                  1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                  [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                  diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                  heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                  gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                  Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                  blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                  Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                  diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                  46

                                                                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                  47

                                                                  8 Bibliography

                                                                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                  48

                                                                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                  109159-178

                                                                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                  Hamburg

                                                                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                  2009

                                                                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                  Heidelberg

                                                                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                  history Word 15 282-312

                                                                  49

                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                  Press Oxford

                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                  2333-47

                                                                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                  50

                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                  Copenhagen

                                                                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                  studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                  Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                  51

                                                                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                  University Press Oxford

                                                                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                  (Saale)

                                                                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                  Society of America Washington DC

                                                                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                  Ruprecht

                                                                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                  52

                                                                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                  Lingua 5289-123

                                                                  53

                                                                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                    Table 7 Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in Larsson (1891)

                                                                    237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

                                                                    VIIa) HEITA 1sg heacutet3sg heacutet heacutet (29) het (5) het heacutet (44) het

                                                                    (8) heacutet het (15) heiacutet

                                                                    heacutet heacutett

                                                                    het

                                                                    3pl heacuteto (2) heto heacuteto (6)

                                                                    VIIc) FAacute 1sg fecc fek fec2sg fect3sg feck (2) fek (7) fek fek(8) fec (4)

                                                                    fexkfecc fecc

                                                                    FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31) fell (2)

                                                                    GANGA 1sg gek gek gec3sg geck (4)

                                                                    gekc gecgeck (7) gek (8) geck

                                                                    (2)gek (26) gec (16) gecſc

                                                                    gek geck gek

                                                                    HALDA 3sg helt helt (2) hellt (3) hellz

                                                                    heacutelt helt (4) helt helt hellt

                                                                    HANGA 3sg heck (3) hek (3) hek hec

                                                                    VIIf) SAacute 3sg ſoslashre ſeacutere

                                                                    SNUacuteA 3sg ſneore (2) ſneoreſc ſnoslashreſc (2)

                                                                    ſnere (2) ſnereſc (2) ſneriſc

                                                                    3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2) ſneroſc

                                                                    Adv HEacuteR her her her heacuter

                                                                    her (44) her (38) heacuter

                                                                    her (2) her

                                                                    her (3) her (16)

                                                                    her (3) her (2) heacuter

                                                                    her her (3)

                                                                    In the whole corpus of manuscripts a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

                                                                    once with lteacutegt (ltheacuteltgt in AM 645 4to) while the same word occurs four

                                                                    other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood tense and

                                                                    person with ltegt Class VIIa preterites on the other hand are

                                                                    overwhelmingly spelled with lteacutegt as exemplified by heita the ratio

                                                                    between ltheacutetgt and lthetgt is 678 against 1666 There is also one

                                                                    6 The remaining spellings of ht (besides ltheiacutetgt) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics

                                                                    32

                                                                    instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                                    ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                                    accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                                    VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                                    only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                                    15 4to see below)

                                                                    63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                                    One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                                    so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                                    about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                                    extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                                    scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                                    orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                                    that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                                    20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                                    hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                                    been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                                    scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                                    popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                                    Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                                    but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                                    several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                                    the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                                    time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                                    mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                                    33

                                                                    up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                                    called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                                    manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                                    According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                                    placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                                    of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                                    Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                                    and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                                    times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                                    more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                                    lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                                    of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                                    The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                                    Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                                    others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                                    orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                                    Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                                    a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                                    either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                                    b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                                    lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                                    c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                    In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                                    lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                                    derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                                    of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                                    historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                                    34

                                                                    kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                    development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                    [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                    always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                    manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                    Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                    spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                    would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                    bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                    with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                    bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                    lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                    reported 44 see table above)

                                                                    bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                    far the instances where it is absent

                                                                    bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                    diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                    35

                                                                    Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                    divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                    Weenen (2000)

                                                                    Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                    a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                    feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                    helt heck (3) hek

                                                                    ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                    d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                    62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                    g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                    97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                    heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                    64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                    A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                    manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                    (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                    bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                    III)

                                                                    bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                    bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                    bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                    36

                                                                    Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                    Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                    VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                    ecc (3)

                                                                    FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                    GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                    gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                    HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                    hellthelt

                                                                    HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                    VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                    SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                    ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                    ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                    VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                    heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                    heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                    ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                    her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                    her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                    Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                    ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                    possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                    does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                    preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                    With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                    against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                    given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                    time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                    AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                    received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                    37

                                                                    richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                    when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                    65 NRA 52

                                                                    Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                    the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                    and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                    how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                    very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                    length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                    89)

                                                                    [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                    vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                    akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                    percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                    In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                    are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                    preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                    forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                    towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                    66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                    The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                    precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                    38

                                                                    manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                    one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                    continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                    the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                    short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                    class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                    Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                    according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                    Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                    Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                    VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                    VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                    VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                    HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                    FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                    GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                    VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                    RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                    VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                    Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                    correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                    no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                    39

                                                                    67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                    accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                    40

                                                                    68 AM 132 fol

                                                                    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                    an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                    feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                    (finginn)

                                                                    falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                    feacutell feacutellu

                                                                    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                    gingu (gingit)

                                                                    halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                    heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                    41

                                                                    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                    (23819)

                                                                    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                    nor accent mark

                                                                    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                    42

                                                                    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                    accent mark

                                                                    69 Summary

                                                                    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                    43

                                                                    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                    language

                                                                    7 Conclusions

                                                                    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                    44

                                                                    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                    of Old English and Old High German

                                                                    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                    place

                                                                    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                    etc)

                                                                    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                    different processes

                                                                    45

                                                                    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                    subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                    its preterite forms

                                                                    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                    46

                                                                    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                    47

                                                                    8 Bibliography

                                                                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                    48

                                                                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                    109159-178

                                                                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                    Hamburg

                                                                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                    2009

                                                                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                    Heidelberg

                                                                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                    history Word 15 282-312

                                                                    49

                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                    Press Oxford

                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                    2333-47

                                                                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                    50

                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                    Copenhagen

                                                                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                    studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                    Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                    51

                                                                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                    University Press Oxford

                                                                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                    (Saale)

                                                                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                    Society of America Washington DC

                                                                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                    Ruprecht

                                                                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                    52

                                                                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                    Lingua 5289-123

                                                                    53

                                                                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                      instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark

                                                                      ltſnǿroſcgt which seems to be one of those cases as in ltheacuteltgt where the

                                                                      accent mark may be superfluous given the very low attestation of subclass

                                                                      VIIf preterites with accent mark Notably among all manuscripts there are

                                                                      only three instances of ltheacutergt (of which one is actually lthgt in Holm Perg

                                                                      15 4to see below)

                                                                      63 Holm perg 15 4to

                                                                      One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the

                                                                      so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homiliacuteuboacutek Holm perg 15 4deg) dated to

                                                                      about 1200 Given its considerable size (102 pages) it represents an

                                                                      extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and

                                                                      scribal practices It has been argued that if follows to some extent the

                                                                      orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise to the extent

                                                                      that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen

                                                                      20044 and 60-61) There is traditionally little agreement on the number of

                                                                      hands in the manuscript but the idea that the whole manuscript could have

                                                                      been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several

                                                                      scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more

                                                                      popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van

                                                                      Weenen 200434) In short thus the handwriting does vary considerably

                                                                      but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of

                                                                      several hands rather than to the will of being as close as possible even in

                                                                      the layout to the parent manuscript(s) or more simply to a considerable

                                                                      time span between the writing of its single parts

                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (196733) wrote about the occurrence of the length

                                                                      mark that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 849

                                                                      33

                                                                      up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                                      called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                                      manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                                      According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                                      placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                                      of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                                      Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                                      and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                                      times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                                      more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                                      lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                                      of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                                      The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                                      Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                                      others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                                      orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                                      Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                                      a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                                      either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                                      b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                                      lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                                      c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                      In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                                      lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                                      derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                                      of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                                      historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                                      34

                                                                      kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                      development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                      [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                      always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                      manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                      Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                      spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                      would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                      bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                      with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                      bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                      lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                      reported 44 see table above)

                                                                      bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                      far the instances where it is absent

                                                                      bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                      diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                      35

                                                                      Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                      divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                      Weenen (2000)

                                                                      Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                      a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                      feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                      helt heck (3) hek

                                                                      ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                      d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                      62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                      g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                      97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                      heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                      64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                      A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                      manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                      (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                      bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                      III)

                                                                      bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                      bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                      bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                      36

                                                                      Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                      Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                      VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                      ecc (3)

                                                                      FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                      GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                      gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                      HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                      hellthelt

                                                                      HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                      VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                      SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                      ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                      ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                      VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                      heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                      heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                      ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                      her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                      her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                      Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                      ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                      possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                      does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                      preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                      With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                      against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                      given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                      time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                      AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                      received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                      37

                                                                      richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                      when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                      65 NRA 52

                                                                      Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                      the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                      and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                      how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                      very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                      length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                      89)

                                                                      [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                      vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                      akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                      percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                      In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                      are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                      preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                      forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                      towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                      66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                      The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                      precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                      38

                                                                      manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                      one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                      continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                      the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                      short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                      class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                      Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                      according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                      Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                      Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                      VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                      VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                      VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                      HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                      FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                      GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                      VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                      RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                      VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                      Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                      correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                      no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                      39

                                                                      67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                      The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                      the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                      Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                      parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                      Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                      which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                      language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                      Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                      Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                      clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                      by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                      spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                      century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                      The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                      appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                      Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                      attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                      instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                      ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                      for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                      79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                      4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                      times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                      accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                      40

                                                                      68 AM 132 fol

                                                                      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                      an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                      feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                      (finginn)

                                                                      falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                      feacutell feacutellu

                                                                      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                      gingu (gingit)

                                                                      halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                      heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                      41

                                                                      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                      (23819)

                                                                      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                      nor accent mark

                                                                      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                      42

                                                                      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                      accent mark

                                                                      69 Summary

                                                                      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                      43

                                                                      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                      language

                                                                      7 Conclusions

                                                                      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                      44

                                                                      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                      of Old English and Old High German

                                                                      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                      place

                                                                      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                      etc)

                                                                      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                      different processes

                                                                      45

                                                                      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                      subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                      its preterite forms

                                                                      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                      46

                                                                      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                      47

                                                                      8 Bibliography

                                                                      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                      48

                                                                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                      109159-178

                                                                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                      Hamburg

                                                                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                      2009

                                                                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                      Heidelberg

                                                                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                      history Word 15 282-312

                                                                      49

                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                      Press Oxford

                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                      2333-47

                                                                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                      50

                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                      Copenhagen

                                                                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                      studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                      Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                      51

                                                                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                      University Press Oxford

                                                                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                      (Saale)

                                                                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                      Society of America Washington DC

                                                                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                      Ruprecht

                                                                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                      52

                                                                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                      Lingua 5289-123

                                                                      53

                                                                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                        up to 968 for almost all hands with the only notable exception of the hand

                                                                        called i exhibiting a meager 557 In fact differences within the

                                                                        manuscripts can be substantial and spelling can vary considerably

                                                                        According to Lindblad (195259-61) the cases where an accent mark is

                                                                        placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150 which represents a frequency

                                                                        of about 025-03 In the most recent edition of the ms de Leeuw van

                                                                        Weenen (200458) estimates that the spelling ltegt for eacute surpasses lteacutegt

                                                                        and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well as eacute occurs a few

                                                                        times as ltęgt or ltaeliggt or lteigt Now these latter spellings are certainly

                                                                        more valuable for the present research than plain ltegt as both ltaeliggt and

                                                                        lteigt could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation

                                                                        of eacute into [je] though [ej] [eⁱ] [aeligi] or a similar intermediate stage

                                                                        The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de

                                                                        Leeuw van Weenen (2004) which is a sort of compromise among several

                                                                        others and not differing too much from them As shown in the table

                                                                        orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands

                                                                        Hand c in particular is inconsistent in the following points

                                                                        a) consonant gemination k is written either ltkgt or ltckgt l(C)

                                                                        either ltllgt ltlgt or ltgt

                                                                        b) the spelling of the preterite of heita with 5 times ltegt vs 5 times

                                                                        lteacutegt and this is about all of occurrences of lthetgt

                                                                        c) most notably the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                        In this last case the normal root vowel is short oslash spelled either ltoslashgt or

                                                                        lteogt but hand c spells ltſeacuteregt (one instance) which could suggest a long

                                                                        derounded vowel and elsewhere the medio-passive ltſnoslashreſcgt while none

                                                                        of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark From the point of view of

                                                                        historical phonology there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

                                                                        34

                                                                        kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                        development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                        [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                        always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                        manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                        Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                        spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                        would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                        bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                        with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                        bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                        lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                        reported 44 see table above)

                                                                        bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                        far the instances where it is absent

                                                                        bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                        diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                        35

                                                                        Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                        divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                        Weenen (2000)

                                                                        Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                        a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                        feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                        helt heck (3) hek

                                                                        ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                        d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                        62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                        g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                        97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                        heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                        64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                        A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                        manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                        (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                        bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                        III)

                                                                        bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                        bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                        bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                        36

                                                                        Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                        Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                        VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                        ecc (3)

                                                                        FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                        GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                        gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                        HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                        hellthelt

                                                                        HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                        VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                        SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                        ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                        ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                        VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                        heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                        heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                        ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                        her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                        her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                        Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                        ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                        possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                        does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                        preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                        With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                        against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                        given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                        time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                        AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                        received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                        37

                                                                        richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                        when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                        65 NRA 52

                                                                        Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                        the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                        and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                        how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                        very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                        length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                        89)

                                                                        [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                        vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                        akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                        percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                        In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                        are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                        preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                        forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                        towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                        66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                        The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                        precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                        38

                                                                        manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                        one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                        continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                        the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                        short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                        class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                        Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                        according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                        Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                        Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                        VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                        VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                        VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                        HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                        FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                        GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                        VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                        RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                        VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                        Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                        correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                        no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                        39

                                                                        67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                        The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                        the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                        Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                        parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                        Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                        which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                        language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                        Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                        Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                        clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                        by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                        spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                        century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                        The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                        appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                        Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                        attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                        instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                        ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                        for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                        79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                        4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                        times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                        accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                        40

                                                                        68 AM 132 fol

                                                                        The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                        (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                        included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                        as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                        seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                        Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                        and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                        that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                        secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                        an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                        Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                        faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                        feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                        (finginn)

                                                                        falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                        feacutell feacutellu

                                                                        ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                        gingu (gingit)

                                                                        halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                        heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                        Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                        notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                        accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                        vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                        other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                        41

                                                                        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                        (23819)

                                                                        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                        nor accent mark

                                                                        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                        42

                                                                        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                        accent mark

                                                                        69 Summary

                                                                        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                        43

                                                                        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                        language

                                                                        7 Conclusions

                                                                        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                        44

                                                                        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                        of Old English and Old High German

                                                                        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                        place

                                                                        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                        etc)

                                                                        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                        different processes

                                                                        45

                                                                        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                        subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                        its preterite forms

                                                                        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                        46

                                                                        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                        47

                                                                        8 Bibliography

                                                                        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                        48

                                                                        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                        109159-178

                                                                        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                        Hamburg

                                                                        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                        2009

                                                                        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                        Heidelberg

                                                                        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                        history Word 15 282-312

                                                                        49

                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                        Press Oxford

                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                        2333-47

                                                                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                        50

                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                        Copenhagen

                                                                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                        studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                        Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                        51

                                                                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                        University Press Oxford

                                                                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                        (Saale)

                                                                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                        Society of America Washington DC

                                                                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                        Ruprecht

                                                                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                        52

                                                                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                        Lingua 5289-123

                                                                        53

                                                                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                          kind of preterites had a short oslash and never a long one because its normal

                                                                          development into modern Icelandic would have then been snaeligri

                                                                          [snairɪ] rather than sneacuteri [snjerɪ] Hand q spells ltſnereſcgt but also

                                                                          always ltheacutetgt without exceptions Given all other spellings elsewhere in the

                                                                          manuscript it is therefore unlikely that ltſeacuteregt indicates a long vowel

                                                                          Hand i is the only one marking a VIIc preterite but at the same time

                                                                          spelling ltfellgt and lthetothorngt and it must therefore be deemed unreliable I

                                                                          would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript

                                                                          bull the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short e in VIIf short oslash

                                                                          with some instances of derounding to e

                                                                          bull the word here when not abbreviated appears nearly always as

                                                                          lthergt (37 times) and only once as lthgt 73v22 (whereas Larsson

                                                                          reported 44 see table above)

                                                                          bull the vocalism of VIIa preterites is eacute as the acute mark surpasses by

                                                                          far the instances where it is absent

                                                                          bull it is possible that the spelling ltheacuteitogt 47v12 notes some kind of

                                                                          diphthongisation of ē gt [ei] although it only occurs in one instance

                                                                          35

                                                                          Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                          divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                          Weenen (2000)

                                                                          Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                          a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                          feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                          helt heck (3) hek

                                                                          ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                          d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                          62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                          g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                          97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                          heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                          64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                          A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                          manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                          (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                          bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                          III)

                                                                          bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                          bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                          bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                          36

                                                                          Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                          Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                          VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                          ecc (3)

                                                                          FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                          GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                          gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                          HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                          hellthelt

                                                                          HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                          VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                          SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                          ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                          ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                          VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                          heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                          heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                          ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                          her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                          her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                          Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                          ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                          possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                          does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                          preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                          With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                          against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                          given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                          time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                          AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                          received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                          37

                                                                          richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                          when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                          65 NRA 52

                                                                          Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                          the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                          and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                          how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                          very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                          length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                          89)

                                                                          [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                          vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                          akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                          percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                          In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                          are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                          preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                          forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                          towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                          66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                          The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                          precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                          38

                                                                          manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                          one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                          continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                          the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                          short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                          class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                          Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                          according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                          Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                          Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                          VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                          VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                          VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                          HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                          FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                          GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                          VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                          RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                          VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                          Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                          correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                          no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                          39

                                                                          67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                          The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                          the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                          Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                          parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                          Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                          which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                          language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                          Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                          Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                          clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                          by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                          spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                          century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                          The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                          appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                          Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                          attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                          instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                          ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                          for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                          79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                          4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                          times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                          accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                          40

                                                                          68 AM 132 fol

                                                                          The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                          (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                          included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                          as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                          seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                          Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                          and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                          that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                          secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                          an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                          Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                          faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                          feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                          (finginn)

                                                                          falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                          feacutell feacutellu

                                                                          ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                          gingu (gingit)

                                                                          halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                          heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                          Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                          notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                          accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                          vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                          other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                          41

                                                                          are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                          ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                          Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                          ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                          Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                          Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                          occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                          (23819)

                                                                          But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                          diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                          halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                          preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                          without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                          times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                          neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                          [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                          preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                          times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                          an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                          nor accent mark

                                                                          Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                          diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                          hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                          do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                          expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                          here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                          heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                          42

                                                                          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                          accent mark

                                                                          69 Summary

                                                                          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                          43

                                                                          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                          language

                                                                          7 Conclusions

                                                                          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                          44

                                                                          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                          of Old English and Old High German

                                                                          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                          place

                                                                          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                          etc)

                                                                          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                          different processes

                                                                          45

                                                                          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                          subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                          its preterite forms

                                                                          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                          46

                                                                          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                          47

                                                                          8 Bibliography

                                                                          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                          48

                                                                          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                          109159-178

                                                                          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                          Hamburg

                                                                          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                          2009

                                                                          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                          Heidelberg

                                                                          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                          history Word 15 282-312

                                                                          49

                                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                          Press Oxford

                                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                          2333-47

                                                                          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                          50

                                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                          Copenhagen

                                                                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                          studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                          Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                          51

                                                                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                          University Press Oxford

                                                                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                          (Saale)

                                                                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                          Society of America Washington DC

                                                                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                          Ruprecht

                                                                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                          52

                                                                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                          Lingua 5289-123

                                                                          53

                                                                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                            Table 10 Orthography of subclasses VIIa VIIc and VIIf strong preterites

                                                                            divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4deg as according to de Leeuw van

                                                                            Weenen (2000)

                                                                            Hand VII c VII f VII aFAacute FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SAacute SNUacuteA HEITA

                                                                            a 1r 1v28-40 geb 1v1-27 heacutetc 2r-40v27 fek (3)

                                                                            feck (2)fe fell geck (4) hellt (2)

                                                                            helt heck (3) hek

                                                                            ſeacutere ſnoslashreſc het (4) heacutet (5) heto

                                                                            d 40v27-42ve 43r-44v fellf 45r-50v4 61v-

                                                                            62v24geck heacutet heacuteito

                                                                            g 50v5-54r heacuteth 54v-56vi 57r-61r feacutek fell hetothornk 62v25-65v18 fe (2) heacutet heacutetol 65v19-66v 69r ſoslashrem 67r-68vn 69v-77v fe gec he ſnoslashroſco 78r-80v3 ge (3) heacutet (3)p 80v4-35 94r19-

                                                                            97rfecc fell (5) Ge ge het helt ſneoeſc het heacutet (11)

                                                                            heacutetoq 81r-94r19 fe ge geck het he ſnereſc heacutet (8)r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) heacutetō

                                                                            64 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                            A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian

                                                                            manuscripts until ca 1250 The following table based on Holtsmark

                                                                            (1955) contains the following manuscripts

                                                                            bull Norwegian Homily Book I II III (AM 619 4to abbr Hom I II

                                                                            III)

                                                                            bull AM 655 IX 4to (abbr 655 IX)

                                                                            bull Oacutelafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol abbr OT)

                                                                            bull Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv abbr ND)

                                                                            36

                                                                            Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                            Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                            VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                            ecc (3)

                                                                            FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                            GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                            gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                            HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                            hellthelt

                                                                            HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                            VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                            SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                            ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                            ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                            VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                            heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                            heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                            ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                            her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                            her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                            Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                            ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                            possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                            does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                            preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                            With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                            against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                            given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                            time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                            AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                            received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                            37

                                                                            richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                            when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                            65 NRA 52

                                                                            Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                            the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                            and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                            how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                            very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                            length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                            89)

                                                                            [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                            vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                            akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                            percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                            In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                            are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                            preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                            forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                            towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                            66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                            The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                            precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                            38

                                                                            manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                            one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                            continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                            the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                            short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                            class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                            Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                            according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                            Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                            Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                            VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                            VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                            VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                            HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                            FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                            GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                            VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                            RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                            VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                            Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                            correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                            no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                            39

                                                                            67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                            The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                            the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                            Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                            parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                            Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                            which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                            language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                            Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                            Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                            clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                            by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                            spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                            century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                            The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                            appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                            Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                            attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                            instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                            ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                            for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                            79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                            4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                            times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                            accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                            40

                                                                            68 AM 132 fol

                                                                            The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                            (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                            included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                            as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                            seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                            Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                            and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                            that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                            secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                            an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                            Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                            faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                            feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                            (finginn)

                                                                            falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                            feacutell feacutellu

                                                                            ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                            gingu (gingit)

                                                                            halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                            heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                            Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                            notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                            accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                            vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                            other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                            41

                                                                            are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                            ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                            Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                            ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                            Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                            Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                            occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                            (23819)

                                                                            But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                            diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                            halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                            preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                            without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                            times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                            neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                            [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                            preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                            times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                            an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                            nor accent mark

                                                                            Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                            diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                            hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                            do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                            expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                            here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                            heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                            42

                                                                            the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                            accent mark

                                                                            69 Summary

                                                                            To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                            texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                            short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                            similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                            largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                            characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                            in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                            in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                            subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                            has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                            the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                            of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                            Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                            always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                            the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                            diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                            as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                            short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                            (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                            with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                            only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                            will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                            reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                            43

                                                                            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                            language

                                                                            7 Conclusions

                                                                            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                            44

                                                                            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                            of Old English and Old High German

                                                                            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                            place

                                                                            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                            etc)

                                                                            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                            different processes

                                                                            45

                                                                            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                            subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                            its preterite forms

                                                                            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                            46

                                                                            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                            47

                                                                            8 Bibliography

                                                                            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                            48

                                                                            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                            109159-178

                                                                            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                            Hamburg

                                                                            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                            2009

                                                                            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                            Heidelberg

                                                                            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                            history Word 15 282-312

                                                                            49

                                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                            Press Oxford

                                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                            2333-47

                                                                            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                            50

                                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                            Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                            Copenhagen

                                                                            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                            studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                            Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                            51

                                                                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                            University Press Oxford

                                                                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                            (Saale)

                                                                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                            Society of America Washington DC

                                                                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                            Ruprecht

                                                                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                            52

                                                                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                            Lingua 5289-123

                                                                            53

                                                                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                              Table 8 Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and heacuter in early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

                                                                              Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I 51

                                                                              VIIC) FAacute 3sg fecc (5) fec (7)

                                                                              ecc (3)

                                                                              FALLA 3sg fell (11) fel ell (4) aeligl ell (4)

                                                                              GANGA 1sg gecc 3sg gecc (11)

                                                                              gec (3)gec (3) gecc (4)

                                                                              HALDA 2sg helz3sg helt (5)

                                                                              hellthelt

                                                                              HANGA 2sg hect3sg hecc (2) hec

                                                                              VIIF) SAacute 3sg ſere (5)

                                                                              SNUacuteA 2sg ſnereſc (2)3sg ſnere (2)

                                                                              ſnereſc (2) ſnerez

                                                                              ſnere ſneɼe

                                                                              VIIA) HEITA 1sg3sg het (8)

                                                                              heacutet (10)het (2) heacutet

                                                                              heacutet hett het (2) hett

                                                                              ADV HEacuteR her (19) haeligr (5)

                                                                              her (25) heacuter haeligr

                                                                              her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)

                                                                              Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

                                                                              ltheacutergt but with the caption ldquooverskriftrdquo (added later by an another hand

                                                                              possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here The overall situation

                                                                              does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic subclass VIIa

                                                                              preterites are sporadically marked whereas no VIIc and f preterites are

                                                                              With 25 instances of lthergt for the adverb heacuter in Hom II and 19 in Hom I

                                                                              against but one ltheacutergt in Hom II even this seems to be short statistically

                                                                              given the great occurrence of the word ndash and the fact that it occurs so many

                                                                              time in full ndash one would expect it to be closer to the values of heacutet at least in

                                                                              AM 619 4to One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles

                                                                              received at times a different treatment from verbs nouns and other lexically

                                                                              37

                                                                              richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                              when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                              65 NRA 52

                                                                              Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                              the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                              and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                              how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                              very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                              length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                              89)

                                                                              [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                              vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                              akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                              percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                              In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                              are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                              preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                              forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                              towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                              66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                              The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                              precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                              38

                                                                              manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                              one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                              continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                              the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                              short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                              class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                              Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                              according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                              Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                              Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                              VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                              VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                              VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                              HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                              FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                              GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                              VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                              RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                              VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                              Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                              correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                              no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                              39

                                                                              67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                              The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                              the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                              Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                              parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                              Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                              which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                              language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                              Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                              Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                              clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                              by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                              spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                              century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                              The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                              appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                              Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                              attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                              instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                              ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                              for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                              79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                              4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                              times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                              accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                              40

                                                                              68 AM 132 fol

                                                                              The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                              (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                              included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                              as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                              seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                              Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                              and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                              that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                              secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                              an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                              Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                              faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                              feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                              (finginn)

                                                                              falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                              feacutell feacutellu

                                                                              ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                              gingu (gingit)

                                                                              halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                              heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                              Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                              notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                              accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                              vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                              other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                              41

                                                                              are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                              ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                              Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                              ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                              Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                              Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                              occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                              (23819)

                                                                              But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                              diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                              halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                              preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                              without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                              times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                              neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                              [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                              preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                              times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                              an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                              nor accent mark

                                                                              Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                              diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                              hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                              do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                              expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                              here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                              heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                              42

                                                                              the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                              accent mark

                                                                              69 Summary

                                                                              To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                              texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                              short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                              similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                              largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                              characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                              in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                              in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                              subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                              has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                              the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                              of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                              Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                              always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                              the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                              diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                              as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                              short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                              (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                              with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                              only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                              will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                              reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                              43

                                                                              spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                              language

                                                                              7 Conclusions

                                                                              As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                              (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                              attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                              of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                              singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                              Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                              to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                              likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                              which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                              root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                              vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                              syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                              are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                              produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                              Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                              of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                              VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                              long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                              preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                              chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                              may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                              obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                              reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                              44

                                                                              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                              of Old English and Old High German

                                                                              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                              place

                                                                              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                              etc)

                                                                              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                              different processes

                                                                              45

                                                                              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                              subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                              its preterite forms

                                                                              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                              46

                                                                              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                              47

                                                                              8 Bibliography

                                                                              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                              48

                                                                              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                              109159-178

                                                                              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                              Hamburg

                                                                              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                              2009

                                                                              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                              Heidelberg

                                                                              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                              history Word 15 282-312

                                                                              49

                                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                              Press Oxford

                                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                              2333-47

                                                                              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                              50

                                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                              Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                              Copenhagen

                                                                              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                              studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                              Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                              51

                                                                              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                              University Press Oxford

                                                                              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                              (Saale)

                                                                              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                              Society of America Washington DC

                                                                              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                              Ruprecht

                                                                              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                              maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                              52

                                                                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                              Lingua 5289-123

                                                                              53

                                                                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                richer grammatical classes ndash but that is arguably much harder to claim than

                                                                                when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere

                                                                                65 NRA 52

                                                                                Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf

                                                                                the Saint (Oacutelafs saga helga hin elzta NRA 52) found in the Norsk Riksarkiv

                                                                                and dated to ca 1225 In spite of its fragmentary state it is not hard to note

                                                                                how the scribe took very good care in marking length The manuscript is

                                                                                very accurately written also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting

                                                                                length The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (195288-

                                                                                89)

                                                                                [NRA 52] av samtliga fisl Hss har den naumlst houmlgsta accentfrekvensen vid laringng

                                                                                vokal och diftong De 6 raumltt obetydliga fragmenten inneharingller ej mindre aumln 495

                                                                                akutecken och laringng vokal accentueras i 77 av samtliga fall Det houmlgsta

                                                                                percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88)

                                                                                In the original portions of the ms most long vowels in class VII preterites

                                                                                are systematically marked where they should be long (ie in all strong

                                                                                preterites lttoacutekgt ltstoacutethorngt ltfoacutergt ltleacutetgt) and the scarce attestations of the

                                                                                forms ltfekgt (one time) ltheltgt (one time) and ltgekgt (twice) points

                                                                                towards a distinctively short vowel

                                                                                66 GKS 2087 4to

                                                                                The Annales or Konungsannaacutell (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and

                                                                                precise among the sources which make use of the length mark The

                                                                                38

                                                                                manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                                one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                                continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                                the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                                short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                                class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                                Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                                according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                                Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                                Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                                VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                                VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                                VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                                HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                                FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                                GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                                VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                                RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                                VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                                Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                                correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                                no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                                39

                                                                                67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                                The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                                the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                                Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                                parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                                Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                                which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                                language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                                Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                                Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                                clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                                by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                                spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                                century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                                The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                                appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                                Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                                attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                                instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                                ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                                for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                                79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                                4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                                times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                                accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                                40

                                                                                68 AM 132 fol

                                                                                The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                                included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                                as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                                seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                                Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                                and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                                that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                                secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                                an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                                Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                                faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                                feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                                (finginn)

                                                                                falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                                feacutell feacutellu

                                                                                ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                                gingu (gingit)

                                                                                halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                                heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                                Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                                notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                                accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                                vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                                other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                                41

                                                                                are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                                ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                                Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                                ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                                Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                                Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                                occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                                (23819)

                                                                                But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                                diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                                halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                                preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                                without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                                times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                                neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                                [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                                preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                                times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                                an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                                nor accent mark

                                                                                Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                                diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                                hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                                do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                                expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                                here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                                heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                                42

                                                                                the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                accent mark

                                                                                69 Summary

                                                                                To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                43

                                                                                spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                language

                                                                                7 Conclusions

                                                                                As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                44

                                                                                Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                place

                                                                                a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                etc)

                                                                                b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                different processes

                                                                                45

                                                                                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                its preterite forms

                                                                                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                46

                                                                                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                47

                                                                                8 Bibliography

                                                                                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                48

                                                                                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                109159-178

                                                                                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                Hamburg

                                                                                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                2009

                                                                                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                Heidelberg

                                                                                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                49

                                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                Press Oxford

                                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                2333-47

                                                                                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                50

                                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                Copenhagen

                                                                                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                51

                                                                                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                University Press Oxford

                                                                                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                (Saale)

                                                                                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                Ruprecht

                                                                                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                52

                                                                                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                53

                                                                                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                  manuscript was written partly in Latin and partly in Norse by two hands

                                                                                  one after another the older ending the chronicle in 1306 the younger

                                                                                  continuing until 1341 Unfortunately the instances which are relevant to

                                                                                  the present survey do not abound but even in their small number point at a

                                                                                  short vowel in VIIc preterites The following is a chart with all relevant VII

                                                                                  class verb forms in the manuscript based on Buergel (1904)

                                                                                  Table 9 Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl Sml 2087 4to

                                                                                  according to Buergel (1904)

                                                                                  Subclass Infinitive Person and Number

                                                                                  Orthography N of Occurrences

                                                                                  VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres) heiacutet 23 sg heacutet 3

                                                                                  VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg liacuteop (hljoacutep) 4

                                                                                  VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 13 pl fellv 3

                                                                                  HALDA 3 sg hellt 13 pl helldv 1

                                                                                  FAacute Inf faacute 13 sg fe 1

                                                                                  GANGA 3 sg ge 13 pl gengv

                                                                                  VIId LAacuteTA 3 sg leacutet 13 sg leacutetz 13 pl leacutetvz 2Part laacuteti 1Part laacutetn 1

                                                                                  RAacuteETHA 3 sg reacuteeth 13 sg reacuteethz 1

                                                                                  VIIf SNUacuteA 3 pl ſnervz 1

                                                                                  Here the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId in

                                                                                  correspondence of an etymological long vowel on the other hand there is

                                                                                  no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf

                                                                                  39

                                                                                  67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                                  The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                                  the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                                  Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                                  parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                                  Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                                  which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                                  language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                                  Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                                  Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                                  clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                                  by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                                  spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                                  century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                                  The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                                  appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                                  Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                                  attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                                  instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                                  ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                                  for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                                  79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                                  4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                                  times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                                  accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                                  40

                                                                                  68 AM 132 fol

                                                                                  The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                  (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                                  included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                                  as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                                  seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                                  Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                                  and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                                  that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                                  secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                                  an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                                  Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                                  faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                                  feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                                  (finginn)

                                                                                  falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                                  feacutell feacutellu

                                                                                  ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                                  gingu (gingit)

                                                                                  halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                                  heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                                  Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                                  notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                                  accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                                  vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                                  other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                                  41

                                                                                  are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                                  ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                                  Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                                  ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                                  Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                                  Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                                  occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                                  (23819)

                                                                                  But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                                  diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                                  halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                                  preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                                  without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                                  times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                                  neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                                  [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                                  preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                                  times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                                  an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                                  nor accent mark

                                                                                  Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                                  diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                                  hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                                  do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                                  expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                                  here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                                  heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                                  42

                                                                                  the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                  accent mark

                                                                                  69 Summary

                                                                                  To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                  texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                  short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                  similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                  largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                  characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                  in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                  in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                  subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                  has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                  the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                  of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                  Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                  always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                  the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                  diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                  as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                  short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                  (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                  with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                  only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                  will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                  reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                  43

                                                                                  spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                  language

                                                                                  7 Conclusions

                                                                                  As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                  (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                  attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                  of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                  singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                  Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                  to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                  likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                  which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                  root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                  vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                  syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                  are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                  produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                  Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                  of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                  VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                  long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                  preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                  chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                  may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                  obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                  reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                  44

                                                                                  Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                  of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                  Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                  several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                  e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                  being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                  the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                  without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                  primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                  neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                  preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                  monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                  and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                  subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                  Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                  place

                                                                                  a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                  long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                  etc)

                                                                                  b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                  short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                  neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                  Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                  different processes

                                                                                  45

                                                                                  c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                  subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                  d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                  its preterite forms

                                                                                  e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                  adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                  extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                  Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                  diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                  process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                  typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                  syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                  CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                  CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                  across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                  forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                  diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                  [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                  1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                  [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                  diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                  heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                  gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                  Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                  blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                  Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                  diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                  46

                                                                                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                  47

                                                                                  8 Bibliography

                                                                                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                  48

                                                                                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                  109159-178

                                                                                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                  Hamburg

                                                                                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                  2009

                                                                                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                  Heidelberg

                                                                                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                  history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                  49

                                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                  Press Oxford

                                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                  2333-47

                                                                                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                  50

                                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                  Copenhagen

                                                                                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                  studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                  Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                  51

                                                                                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                  University Press Oxford

                                                                                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                  (Saale)

                                                                                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                  Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                  Ruprecht

                                                                                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                  52

                                                                                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                  Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                  53

                                                                                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                    67 AM 519a 4deg

                                                                                    The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4deg dated ca 1280 consists of

                                                                                    the B version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem

                                                                                    Alexandreis by Walter of Chacirctillon with a lacuna of four leaves within 37

                                                                                    parchment leaves The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr

                                                                                    Joacutensson (born ca 1210 died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock Perg 4deg nr 24

                                                                                    which are much younger than AM 519 a 4deg and contain the A version The

                                                                                    language is surely Icelandic and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe but

                                                                                    Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript as was common in

                                                                                    Iceland at that time It is especially interesting for its paleography as it is

                                                                                    clearly written by a single hand and even the corrections seem to be written

                                                                                    by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and

                                                                                    spelling) There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-

                                                                                    century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 200925)

                                                                                    The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels and it never

                                                                                    appears on the preterites of faacute falla ganga halda and ganga (de Leeuw van

                                                                                    Weenen 2009141) As far as VIIf is concerned only the preterite of snuacutea is

                                                                                    attested 4 times appearing as either sneri or snoslashri (although in several

                                                                                    instances the ltegt is closed so that it is not really distinguishable from

                                                                                    ltoslashgt) The overall occurrences of lteacutegt are 94 in all cases against the 17524

                                                                                    for ltegt (de Leeuw van Weenen 200934) The phoneme e is spelled ltegt

                                                                                    79 times lteacutegt 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 200951) ltheacutetgt occurs only

                                                                                    4 times against the 43 times of unmarked lthetgt and lthergt occurs 12

                                                                                    times and never with the acute The scribe therefore only rarely uses the

                                                                                    accent mark to denote vowel length

                                                                                    40

                                                                                    68 AM 132 fol

                                                                                    The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                    (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                                    included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                                    as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                                    seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                                    Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                                    and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                                    that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                                    secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                                    an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                                    Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                                    faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                                    feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                                    (finginn)

                                                                                    falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                                    feacutell feacutellu

                                                                                    ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                                    gingu (gingit)

                                                                                    halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                                    heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                                    Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                                    notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                                    accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                                    vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                                    other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                                    41

                                                                                    are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                                    ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                                    Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                                    ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                                    Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                                    Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                                    occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                                    (23819)

                                                                                    But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                                    diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                                    halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                                    preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                                    without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                                    times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                                    neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                                    [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                                    preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                                    times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                                    an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                                    nor accent mark

                                                                                    Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                                    diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                                    hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                                    do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                                    expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                                    here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                                    heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                                    42

                                                                                    the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                    accent mark

                                                                                    69 Summary

                                                                                    To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                    texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                    short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                    similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                    largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                    characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                    in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                    in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                    subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                    has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                    the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                    of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                    Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                    always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                    the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                    diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                    as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                    short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                    (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                    with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                    only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                    will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                    reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                    43

                                                                                    spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                    language

                                                                                    7 Conclusions

                                                                                    As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                    (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                    attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                    of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                    singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                    Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                    to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                    likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                    which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                    root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                    vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                    syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                    are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                    produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                    Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                    of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                    VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                    long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                    preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                    chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                    may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                    obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                    reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                    44

                                                                                    Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                    of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                    Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                    several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                    e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                    being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                    the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                    without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                    primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                    neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                    preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                    monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                    and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                    subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                    Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                    place

                                                                                    a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                    long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                    etc)

                                                                                    b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                    short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                    neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                    Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                    different processes

                                                                                    45

                                                                                    c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                    subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                    d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                    its preterite forms

                                                                                    e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                    adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                    extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                    Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                    diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                    process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                    typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                    syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                    CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                    CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                    across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                    forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                    diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                    [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                    1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                    [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                    diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                    heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                    gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                    Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                    blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                    Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                    diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                    46

                                                                                    got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                    chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                    stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                    Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                    of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                    preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                    between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                    20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                    separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                    separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                    as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                    second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                    ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                    the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                    is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                    diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                    writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                    with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                    1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                    and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                    and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                    pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                    to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                    47

                                                                                    8 Bibliography

                                                                                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                    48

                                                                                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                    109159-178

                                                                                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                    Hamburg

                                                                                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                    2009

                                                                                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                    Heidelberg

                                                                                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                    history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                    49

                                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                    Press Oxford

                                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                    2333-47

                                                                                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                    50

                                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                    Copenhagen

                                                                                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                    studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                    Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                    51

                                                                                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                    University Press Oxford

                                                                                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                    (Saale)

                                                                                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                    Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                    Ruprecht

                                                                                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                    52

                                                                                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                    Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                    53

                                                                                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                      68 AM 132 fol

                                                                                      The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                      (AM 132 fol) dated ca 1330-1370 The manuscript contains several sagas

                                                                                      included Laxdaeligla and Foacutestbraeligethra saga and was written mostly by one hand

                                                                                      as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one from the

                                                                                      seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 200022)

                                                                                      Here according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen the verbs faacute falla ganga

                                                                                      and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms to the extent

                                                                                      that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation e~i (attested

                                                                                      secondary forms are noted in brackets all forms are normalised in the table

                                                                                      an their spelling discussed below)

                                                                                      Table 10 Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol

                                                                                      faacute fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

                                                                                      feacutekk fingu fenginn

                                                                                      (finginn)

                                                                                      falla fell fellu fallinn

                                                                                      feacutell feacutellu

                                                                                      ganga gekk (gengu) gengit

                                                                                      gingu (gingit)

                                                                                      halda helt heldu haldinn

                                                                                      heacutelt heacuteldu

                                                                                      Although the spelling in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is generally remarkably precise the

                                                                                      notation of length is not to the extent that the editor states that ldquothe use of

                                                                                      accents in Moumlethruvallaboacutek is such that no conclusions for the length of

                                                                                      vowels can be drawn from itrdquo (de Leeuw van Weenen 200063) For words

                                                                                      other than VII class strong verbs only one instance of lteacutegt and two of ltiegt

                                                                                      41

                                                                                      are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                                      ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                                      Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                                      ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                                      Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                                      Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                                      occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                                      (23819)

                                                                                      But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                                      diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                                      halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                                      preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                                      without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                                      times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                                      neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                                      [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                                      preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                                      times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                                      an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                                      nor accent mark

                                                                                      Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                                      diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                                      hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                                      do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                                      expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                                      here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                                      heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                                      42

                                                                                      the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                      accent mark

                                                                                      69 Summary

                                                                                      To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                      texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                      short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                      similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                      largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                      characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                      in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                      in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                      subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                      has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                      the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                      of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                      Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                      always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                      the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                      diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                      as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                      short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                      (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                      with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                      only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                      will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                      reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                      43

                                                                                      spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                      language

                                                                                      7 Conclusions

                                                                                      As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                      (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                      attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                      of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                      singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                      Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                      to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                      likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                      which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                      root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                      vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                      syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                      are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                      produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                      Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                      of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                      VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                      long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                      preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                      chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                      may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                      obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                      reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                      44

                                                                                      Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                      of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                      Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                      several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                      e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                      being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                      the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                      without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                      primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                      neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                      preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                      monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                      and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                      subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                      Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                      place

                                                                                      a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                      long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                      etc)

                                                                                      b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                      short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                      neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                      Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                      different processes

                                                                                      45

                                                                                      c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                      subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                      d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                      its preterite forms

                                                                                      e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                      adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                      extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                      Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                      diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                      process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                      typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                      syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                      CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                      CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                      across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                      forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                      diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                      [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                      1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                      [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                      diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                      heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                      gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                      Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                      blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                      Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                      diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                      46

                                                                                      got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                      chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                      stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                      Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                      of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                      preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                      between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                      20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                      separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                      separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                      as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                      second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                      ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                      the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                      is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                      diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                      writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                      with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                      1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                      and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                      and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                      pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                      to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                      47

                                                                                      8 Bibliography

                                                                                      Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                      Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                      Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                      Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                      Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                      Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                      Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                      Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                      Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                      httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                      breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                      orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                      Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                      Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                      hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                      Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                      XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                      Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                      48

                                                                                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                      109159-178

                                                                                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                      Hamburg

                                                                                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                      2009

                                                                                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                      Heidelberg

                                                                                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                      history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                      49

                                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                      Press Oxford

                                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                      2333-47

                                                                                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                      50

                                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                      Copenhagen

                                                                                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                      studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                      Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                      51

                                                                                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                      University Press Oxford

                                                                                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                      (Saale)

                                                                                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                      Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                      Ruprecht

                                                                                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                      52

                                                                                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                      Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                      53

                                                                                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                        are recorded for e eacute is usually spelled ltegt 2937 times lteacutegt 294 times

                                                                                        ltiegt 275 times ltiacuteegt 56 times lteigt 3 times ltieacutegt 1 time and ltiaeliggt 1 time

                                                                                        Lindblad (1952128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with

                                                                                        ldquoetymologically long vowelrdquo out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript

                                                                                        Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by

                                                                                        Lindblad to have a short vowel as it is mentioned that the accent mark

                                                                                        occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels of which once in feacutell

                                                                                        (23819)

                                                                                        But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

                                                                                        diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs faacute falla and

                                                                                        halda According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000) the

                                                                                        preterite of faacute is written ltiekgt one time ltieckgt 9 times and 20 times

                                                                                        without diphthong while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as ltiellgt 2

                                                                                        times as ltiellugt 2 times as lteacutellgt with the accent mark and 34 times with

                                                                                        neither diphthong nor accent mark It seems therefore that the diphthong

                                                                                        [je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda The

                                                                                        preterite of halda appears as lthɩelltgt 3 times lthɩeltgt 2 times lthɩellugt 2

                                                                                        times and once as lthɩellɩgt for a total of 8 times as well as 2 times with

                                                                                        an accent mark as ltheacutelltgt against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong

                                                                                        nor accent mark

                                                                                        Class VII strong preterites however seem to be the only cases of

                                                                                        diphthongation in the manuscript since in addition to the preterites of

                                                                                        hanga (5 times) ganga (53 times) which are present in the manuscript but

                                                                                        do not show neither ltiegt nor accent mark other words which would be

                                                                                        expected to show ltiegt just like in feacutekk feacutell and heacutelt do not The adverb

                                                                                        here is written in full a number of times but always as lthergt (unlike

                                                                                        heraeth which is always but once abbreviated compounds included) forms

                                                                                        42

                                                                                        the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                        accent mark

                                                                                        69 Summary

                                                                                        To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                        texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                        short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                        similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                        largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                        characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                        in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                        in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                        subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                        has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                        the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                        of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                        Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                        always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                        the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                        diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                        as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                        short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                        (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                        with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                        only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                        will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                        reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                        43

                                                                                        spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                        language

                                                                                        7 Conclusions

                                                                                        As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                        (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                        attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                        of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                        singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                        Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                        to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                        likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                        which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                        root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                        vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                        syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                        are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                        produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                        Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                        of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                        VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                        long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                        preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                        chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                        may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                        obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                        reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                        44

                                                                                        Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                        of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                        Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                        several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                        e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                        being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                        the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                        without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                        primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                        neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                        preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                        monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                        and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                        subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                        Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                        place

                                                                                        a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                        long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                        etc)

                                                                                        b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                        short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                        neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                        Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                        different processes

                                                                                        45

                                                                                        c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                        subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                        d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                        its preterite forms

                                                                                        e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                        adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                        extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                        Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                        diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                        process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                        typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                        syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                        CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                        CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                        across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                        forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                        diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                        [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                        1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                        [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                        diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                        heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                        gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                        Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                        blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                        Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                        diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                        46

                                                                                        got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                        chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                        stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                        Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                        of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                        preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                        between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                        20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                        separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                        separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                        as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                        second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                        ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                        the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                        is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                        diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                        writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                        with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                        1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                        and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                        and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                        pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                        to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                        47

                                                                                        8 Bibliography

                                                                                        Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                        Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                        Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                        Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                        Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                        Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                        Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                        Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                        Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                        httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                        breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                        orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                        Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                        Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                        hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                        Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                        XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                        Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                        48

                                                                                        Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                        Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                        Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                        Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                        Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                        Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                        109159-178

                                                                                        Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                        Hamburg

                                                                                        Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                        Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                        Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                        given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                        2009

                                                                                        Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                        Heidelberg

                                                                                        Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                        Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                        Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                        history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                        49

                                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                        Press Oxford

                                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                        2333-47

                                                                                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                        50

                                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                        Copenhagen

                                                                                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                        studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                        Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                        51

                                                                                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                        University Press Oxford

                                                                                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                        (Saale)

                                                                                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                        Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                        Ruprecht

                                                                                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                        52

                                                                                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                        Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                        53

                                                                                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                          the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times eacutel occurs once with an

                                                                                          accent mark

                                                                                          69 Summary

                                                                                          To summarise the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

                                                                                          texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc VIIf and heacuter was originally

                                                                                          short until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century A

                                                                                          similar survey but of poetic texts is unfortunately impossible because the

                                                                                          largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-

                                                                                          characterised syllables which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables

                                                                                          in the metre (ie fekk (heavy) and feacutekk (hyper-characterised) would behave

                                                                                          in exactly the same way within the metre) Nonetheless a survey of some

                                                                                          subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change e gt [je]

                                                                                          has been carried out by Haukur THORNorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at

                                                                                          the University of Iceland in 2009 and personal communication) The scope

                                                                                          of Haukurs survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity

                                                                                          Shift Out of 60 instances sneri was found 13 times and reri 2 times both

                                                                                          always with a short vowel This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as

                                                                                          the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter to undergo

                                                                                          diphthongisation (according to Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925115-116 as late

                                                                                          as the 18th century) These data also exclude the possibility that snoslashri was

                                                                                          short but the unrounded sneacuteri was long Even as late as the Guethbrandsbibliacutea

                                                                                          (1584) where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted

                                                                                          with a diphthong (hiellt blies hiedan ietin) the spelling ltsneregt is the still

                                                                                          only one coming forth (cf Joacuten Helgason 192918 and Bandle 1956407) As

                                                                                          will be discussed in the final chapter it is likely that the spelling ltiegt

                                                                                          reflected some regional pronunciation which took relatively longer time to

                                                                                          43

                                                                                          spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                          language

                                                                                          7 Conclusions

                                                                                          As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                          (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                          attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                          of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                          singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                          Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                          to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                          likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                          which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                          root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                          vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                          syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                          are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                          produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                          Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                          of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                          VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                          long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                          preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                          chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                          may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                          obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                          reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                          44

                                                                                          Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                          of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                          Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                          several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                          e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                          being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                          the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                          without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                          primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                          neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                          preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                          monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                          and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                          subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                          Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                          place

                                                                                          a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                          long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                          etc)

                                                                                          b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                          short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                          neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                          Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                          different processes

                                                                                          45

                                                                                          c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                          subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                          d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                          its preterite forms

                                                                                          e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                          adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                          extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                          Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                          diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                          process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                          typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                          syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                          CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                          CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                          across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                          forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                          diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                          [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                          1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                          [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                          diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                          heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                          gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                          Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                          blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                          Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                          diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                          46

                                                                                          got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                          chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                          stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                          Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                          of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                          preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                          between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                          20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                          separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                          separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                          as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                          second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                          ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                          the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                          is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                          diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                          writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                          with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                          1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                          and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                          and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                          pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                          to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                          47

                                                                                          8 Bibliography

                                                                                          Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                          Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                          Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                          Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                          Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                          Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                          Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                          Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                          Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                          httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                          breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                          orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                          Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                          Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                          hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                          Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                          XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                          Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                          48

                                                                                          Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                          Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                          Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                          Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                          Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                          Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                          109159-178

                                                                                          Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                          Hamburg

                                                                                          Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                          Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                          Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                          given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                          2009

                                                                                          Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                          Heidelberg

                                                                                          Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                          Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                          Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                          history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                          49

                                                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                          Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                          Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                          Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                          of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                          Press Oxford

                                                                                          Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                          Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                          Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                          iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                          Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                          2333-47

                                                                                          Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                          Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                          Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                          neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                          Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                          50

                                                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                          Copenhagen

                                                                                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                          studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                          Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                          51

                                                                                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                          University Press Oxford

                                                                                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                          (Saale)

                                                                                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                          Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                          Ruprecht

                                                                                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                          52

                                                                                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                          Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                          53

                                                                                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                            spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written

                                                                                            language

                                                                                            7 Conclusions

                                                                                            As we have seen both subclass VIIc (hellt fell gekk hekk etc) and VIIf

                                                                                            (sneri reri etc) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first

                                                                                            attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century when some

                                                                                            of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite

                                                                                            singular (lthielltgt in Moumlethruvallaboacutek AM 132 fol from 1330-1370 cf

                                                                                            Chapter 7) Therefore the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has

                                                                                            to account for ĕ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites The most

                                                                                            likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable

                                                                                            which would have come to bear the stress through the elision of the old

                                                                                            root vowel This could have either happened through ldquoejectionrdquo of the old

                                                                                            vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or more likely haplology of the entire old root

                                                                                            syllable (Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1992) The reasons for preferring haplology

                                                                                            are chiefly two On one hand there is no evidence that a contraction ever

                                                                                            produced a radical ē which was then subsequently shortened in Old

                                                                                            Norse On the other hand a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening

                                                                                            of a short e to ē2 is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (heacutet leacutek etc))

                                                                                            VIId (leacutet reacuteeth etc) and VIIe (bleacutet) which all have either a diphthong or a

                                                                                            long vowel in the present stem and an open syllable structure in the

                                                                                            preterite plural Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in

                                                                                            chapter 5 (eg heht reord) their retention of a part of the old root syllable

                                                                                            may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether

                                                                                            obsolete this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of

                                                                                            reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times and that the development in

                                                                                            44

                                                                                            Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                            of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                            Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                            several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                            e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                            being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                            the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                            without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                            primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                            neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                            preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                            monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                            and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                            subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                            Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                            place

                                                                                            a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                            long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                            etc)

                                                                                            b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                            short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                            neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                            Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                            different processes

                                                                                            45

                                                                                            c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                            subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                            d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                            its preterite forms

                                                                                            e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                            adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                            extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                            Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                            diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                            process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                            typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                            syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                            CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                            CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                            across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                            forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                            diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                            [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                            1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                            [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                            diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                            heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                            gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                            Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                            blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                            Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                            diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                            46

                                                                                            got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                            chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                            stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                            Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                            of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                            preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                            between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                            20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                            separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                            separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                            as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                            second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                            ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                            the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                            is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                            diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                            writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                            with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                            1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                            and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                            and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                            pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                            to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                            47

                                                                                            8 Bibliography

                                                                                            Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                            Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                            Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                            Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                            Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                            Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                            Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                            Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                            Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                            httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                            breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                            orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                            Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                            Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                            hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                            Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                            XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                            Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                            48

                                                                                            Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                            Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                            Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                            Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                            Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                            Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                            109159-178

                                                                                            Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                            Hamburg

                                                                                            Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                            Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                            Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                            given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                            2009

                                                                                            Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                            Heidelberg

                                                                                            Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                            Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                            Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                            history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                            49

                                                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                            Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                            Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                            Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                            of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                            Press Oxford

                                                                                            Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                            Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                            Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                            iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                            Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                            2333-47

                                                                                            Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                            Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                            Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                            neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                            Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                            50

                                                                                            Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                            Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                            Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                            Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                            Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                            Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                            Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                            de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                            Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                            Copenhagen

                                                                                            Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                            studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                            Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                            altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                            Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                            altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                            beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                            Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                            Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                            51

                                                                                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                            University Press Oxford

                                                                                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                            (Saale)

                                                                                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                            Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                            Ruprecht

                                                                                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                            52

                                                                                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                            Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                            53

                                                                                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                              Old Norse (and for sure Old Saxon) may have been independent from that

                                                                                              of Old English and Old High German

                                                                                              Presumably from a very early time a fluctuation in the vowel length of

                                                                                              several Old Icelandic words starts taking place Many of such words contain

                                                                                              e in the root It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of

                                                                                              being occasionally emphatically lengthened according to their position in

                                                                                              the sentence a sure example is the adverb her which is primarily noted

                                                                                              without accent mark Moreover as seen in chapter 5 ldquoarchiphonemesrdquo

                                                                                              primarily perceived as short where the correlation of quantity had been

                                                                                              neutralised are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels

                                                                                              preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972138)

                                                                                              monosyllabic strong preterites such as vaacute (from vega) and fraacute (from fregna)

                                                                                              and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in

                                                                                              subclass VIIf eg snuacutea roacutea etc)

                                                                                              Summarising from the 14th century on the following sound changes take

                                                                                              place

                                                                                              a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised included the

                                                                                              long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (heacutet greacutet bleacutet

                                                                                              etc)

                                                                                              b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as

                                                                                              short phonemically ie where the quantity correlation had been

                                                                                              neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snuacutea buacutea vaacute fraacute etc)

                                                                                              Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs because of

                                                                                              different processes

                                                                                              45

                                                                                              c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                              subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                              d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                              its preterite forms

                                                                                              e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                              adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                              extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                              Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                              diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                              process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                              typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                              syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                              CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                              CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                              across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                              forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                              diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                              [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                              1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                              [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                              diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                              heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                              gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                              Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                              blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                              Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                              diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                              46

                                                                                              got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                              chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                              stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                              Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                              of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                              preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                              between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                              20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                              separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                              separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                              as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                              second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                              ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                              the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                              is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                              diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                              writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                              with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                              1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                              and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                              and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                              pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                              to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                              47

                                                                                              8 Bibliography

                                                                                              Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                              Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                              Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                              Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                              Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                              Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                              Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                              Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                              Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                              httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                              breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                              orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                              Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                              Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                              hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                              Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                              XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                              Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                              48

                                                                                              Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                              Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                              Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                              Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                              Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                              Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                              109159-178

                                                                                              Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                              Hamburg

                                                                                              Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                              Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                              Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                              given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                              2009

                                                                                              Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                              Heidelberg

                                                                                              Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                              Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                              Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                              history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                              49

                                                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                              Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                              Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                              Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                              of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                              Press Oxford

                                                                                              Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                              Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                              Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                              iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                              Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                              2333-47

                                                                                              Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                              Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                              Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                              neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                              Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                              50

                                                                                              Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                              Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                              Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                              Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                              Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                              Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                              Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                              de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                              Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                              Copenhagen

                                                                                              Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                              studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                              Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                              altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                              Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                              altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                              beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                              Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                              Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                              51

                                                                                              Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                              University Press Oxford

                                                                                              Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                              Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                              iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                              Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                              (Saale)

                                                                                              Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                              Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                              Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                              Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                              Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                              Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                              Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                              Ruprecht

                                                                                              Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                              Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                              maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                              52

                                                                                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                              Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                              53

                                                                                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                c) in words starting with h+e (heacuteethan heacuteraeth but also heacutekk and heacutelt in

                                                                                                subclass VIIc preterites)

                                                                                                d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb eacuteta by analogy with

                                                                                                its preterite forms

                                                                                                e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of

                                                                                                adjectives (skjoacutett fljoacutett etc) because of an ldquounderlying diphthongrdquo

                                                                                                extended from their masculine and feminine forms

                                                                                                Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the

                                                                                                diphthongisation to [je] because of their word-initial h Through this

                                                                                                process a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered

                                                                                                typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses the new

                                                                                                syllable structures CjeRC (hjelt) and CjeCC hjekk) are closer to

                                                                                                CjeC (hjet rjeeth) and CRjeC (grjet bljet) than the original

                                                                                                CeRC (helt) and CeCC (hekk) Gradually the analogical process spreads

                                                                                                across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too but not to the plural of

                                                                                                forms containing the cluster ng whose root vowel had undergone another

                                                                                                diphthongisation to [ei] This is still evident in the modern pronunciation

                                                                                                [ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                                1924170 [fɛiɳgoslashm] and [gɛiɳgoslashm] which in mod IPA would be

                                                                                                [fejɳgʏm] [gejɳgʏm]) and also heacutengum which at times shows both

                                                                                                diphthongs ([hjejɳgʏm]) because of the word-initial h beside the regular

                                                                                                heacuteldum [hjeldʏm] and feacutellum [fjetlʏm] The diphthong [ei] in fengum and

                                                                                                gengum but also in heacutengum clearly go back to a short monophthong

                                                                                                Meanwhile the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced as falda and

                                                                                                blanda become weak (cf Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1924172 and 84)

                                                                                                Lastly subclass VIIf preterites (snera rera etc) are affected by the

                                                                                                diphthongisation There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

                                                                                                46

                                                                                                got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                                chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                                stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                                Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                                of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                                preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                                between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                                20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                                separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                                separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                                as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                                second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                                ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                                the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                                is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                                diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                                writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                                with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                                1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                                and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                                and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                                pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                                to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                                47

                                                                                                8 Bibliography

                                                                                                Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                                Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                                Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                                Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                                Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                                Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                                Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                                Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                                httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                                breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                                orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                                Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                                Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                                hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                                Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                                XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                                Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                48

                                                                                                Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                                Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                                Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                                Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                                Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                                Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                                109159-178

                                                                                                Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                                Hamburg

                                                                                                Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                                Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                                given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                                2009

                                                                                                Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                                Heidelberg

                                                                                                Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                                Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                                Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                                history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                                49

                                                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                                Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                                Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                                Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                                of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                                Press Oxford

                                                                                                Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                                Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                                Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                                iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                                Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                                2333-47

                                                                                                Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                                Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                                Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                                neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                                Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                                50

                                                                                                Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                Copenhagen

                                                                                                Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                51

                                                                                                Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                University Press Oxford

                                                                                                Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                (Saale)

                                                                                                Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                Ruprecht

                                                                                                Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                52

                                                                                                Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                53

                                                                                                • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                  • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                  got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites First as posited in

                                                                                                  chapter 5 the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present

                                                                                                  stem possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century

                                                                                                  Consequently the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening

                                                                                                  of the root vowel in the preterite Secondly the bisyllabic structure of the

                                                                                                  preterite singular forms on one hand and the dialectal fluctuation

                                                                                                  between ouml and e which to a certain extent continues until as late as the

                                                                                                  20th century (see below) contributed in keeping the subclass typologically

                                                                                                  separated from the others Thirdly and as a consequence of the said

                                                                                                  separation the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type

                                                                                                  as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix for this reason the

                                                                                                  second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected

                                                                                                  ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera gt sneri with ending -ri as

                                                                                                  the weak dental suffix -ethi) Here too as late as the 20th century the process

                                                                                                  is incomplete as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-

                                                                                                  diphthongised variants at least until the 20th century Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                                  writing in the 1920s reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛrɪ] and [sn(j)ɛroslashm]

                                                                                                  with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snoumlrɪ] (Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal

                                                                                                  1924769) [rɛrɪ] beside [rjɛrɪ] (and [roumlrɪ] in East Skaftafell East Fjords

                                                                                                  and West Fjords) (1924657) similarly [grɛrɪ] [grjɛrɪ] [groumlrɪ] (1924274)

                                                                                                  and [njɛrɪ] beside [noumlrɪ] in the East Fjords (1924583) Finally saacute (mod

                                                                                                  pret saacuteethi according to the Beygingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels) migrated

                                                                                                  to the weak proper conjugation forming the preterite with a dental suffix

                                                                                                  47

                                                                                                  8 Bibliography

                                                                                                  Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                                  Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                                  Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                                  Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                                  Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                                  Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                                  Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                                  Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                  Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                                  httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                                  breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                                  orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                                  Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                                  Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                                  hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                                  Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                                  XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                                  Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                  48

                                                                                                  Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                                  Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                                  Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                                  Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                                  Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                                  Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                                  109159-178

                                                                                                  Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                                  Hamburg

                                                                                                  Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                                  Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                  Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                                  given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                                  2009

                                                                                                  Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                                  Heidelberg

                                                                                                  Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                                  Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                                  Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                                  history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                                  49

                                                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                                  Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                                  Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                                  Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                                  of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                                  Press Oxford

                                                                                                  Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                                  Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                                  Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                                  iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                                  Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                                  2333-47

                                                                                                  Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                                  Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                                  Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                                  neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                                  Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                                  50

                                                                                                  Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                  Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                  Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                  Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                  Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                  Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                  Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                  de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                  Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                  Copenhagen

                                                                                                  Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                  studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                  altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                  Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                  altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                  beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                  Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                  Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                  51

                                                                                                  Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                  University Press Oxford

                                                                                                  Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                  Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                  iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                  Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                  (Saale)

                                                                                                  Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                  Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                  Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                  Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                  Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                  Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                  Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                  Ruprecht

                                                                                                  Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                  Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                  maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                  52

                                                                                                  Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                  Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                  Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                  Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                  Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                  53

                                                                                                  • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                    • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                    8 Bibliography

                                                                                                    Bammesberger Alfred 1994 Dehnstufe und Reduplikation im

                                                                                                    Urgermanischen Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universitaumlt zu

                                                                                                    Berlin Akten der Konferenz vom 243 ndash 2631992 aus Anlaszlig von Franz

                                                                                                    Bopps zweihundertjaumlhrigem Geburtstag am 1491991 Ed Reinhard

                                                                                                    Sternemann pp 15-20 Carl Winter Heidelberg

                                                                                                    Bandle Oscar 1956 Die Sprache der Guethbrandsbibliacutea Orthographie und

                                                                                                    Laute Formen Munksgaringrd Hafniaelig

                                                                                                    Beyingarlyacutesing iacuteslensks nuacutetiacutemamaacutels Ed Kristiacuten Bjarnadoacutettir Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                    Magnuacutessonar iacute iacuteslenskum fraeligethum Reykjaviacutek 2002-2010 Available at

                                                                                                    httpbinarnastofnunis (accessed in May 2010)

                                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1925 Um iacuteslenskar orethmyndir aacute 14 og 15 oumlld og

                                                                                                    breytingar thorneirra uacuter fornmaacutelinu meeth viethauka um nyacutejungar iacute

                                                                                                    orethmyndum aacute 16 oumlld og siacuteethar Fjelagsprentsmiethjan Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929a Kvantitetsomvaeligltningen i islandsk Arkiv foumlr

                                                                                                    Nordisk Filologi 4535-81

                                                                                                    Bjoumlrn Karel THORNoacuteroacutelfsson 1929b Nokkur oreth um hinar iacuteslensku

                                                                                                    hljoacuteethbreytingar eacute gt je og y yacute ey gt i iacute ei Studier tillaumlgnade Axel Kock

                                                                                                    Lund CWK Gleerup Arkiv foumlr nordisk filologi tillaumlggsband till band

                                                                                                    XL ny foumlljd 232ndash243

                                                                                                    Braune Wilhelm 1967 Althochdeutsche Grammatik Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                    48

                                                                                                    Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                                    Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                                    Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                                    Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                                    Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                                    Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                                    109159-178

                                                                                                    Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                                    Hamburg

                                                                                                    Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                                    Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                    Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                                    given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                                    2009

                                                                                                    Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                                    Heidelberg

                                                                                                    Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                                    Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                                    Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                                    history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                                    49

                                                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                                    Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                                    Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                                    Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                                    of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                                    Press Oxford

                                                                                                    Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                                    Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                                    Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                                    iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                                    Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                                    2333-47

                                                                                                    Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                                    Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                                    Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                                    neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                                    Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                                    50

                                                                                                    Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                    Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                    Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                    Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                    Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                    Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                    Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                    de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                    Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                    Copenhagen

                                                                                                    Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                    studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                    altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                    Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                    altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                    beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                    Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                    Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                    51

                                                                                                    Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                    University Press Oxford

                                                                                                    Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                    Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                    iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                    Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                    (Saale)

                                                                                                    Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                    Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                    Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                    Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                    Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                    Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                    Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                    Ruprecht

                                                                                                    Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                    Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                    maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                    52

                                                                                                    Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                    Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                    Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                    Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                    Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                    53

                                                                                                    • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                      • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                      Bremmer Rolf H Jr 2000 An Introduction to Old Frisian History

                                                                                                      Grammar Reader Glossary Benjamins Leiden and Philadelphia

                                                                                                      Cleasby Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874 An Icelandic-English

                                                                                                      Dictionary Clarendon Press Oxford

                                                                                                      Fulk RD 1987 Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

                                                                                                      Germanic Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur

                                                                                                      109159-178

                                                                                                      Garnes Sara 1976 Quantity in Icelandic production and perception Buske

                                                                                                      Hamburg

                                                                                                      Haugen Einar 1982 Scandinavian Language Structures A Comparative

                                                                                                      Historical Study Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                      Haukur THORNorgeirsson 2009 Hin helgu eacute - stiklur uacuter erindi Handout of a talk

                                                                                                      given at Haacuteskoacuteli Iacuteslands ndash University of Iceland on September 11th

                                                                                                      2009

                                                                                                      Heusler Andreas 1950 Altislaumlndisches Elementarbuch 3rd ed Carl Winter

                                                                                                      Heidelberg

                                                                                                      Holtsmark Anne 1955 Ordforraringdet i de eldste norske haringndskrifter til ca 1250

                                                                                                      Gammelnorsk ordboksverk Oslo

                                                                                                      Hreinn Bedediktsson 1959 The vowel system of Icelandic a survey of its

                                                                                                      history Word 15 282-312

                                                                                                      49

                                                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                                      Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                                      Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                                      Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                                      of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                                      Press Oxford

                                                                                                      Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                                      Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                                      Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                                      iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                                      Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                                      2333-47

                                                                                                      Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                                      Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                                      Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                                      neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                                      Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                                      50

                                                                                                      Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                      Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                      Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                      Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                      Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                      Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                      Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                      de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                      Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                      Copenhagen

                                                                                                      Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                      studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                      altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                      Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                      altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                      beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                      Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                      Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                      51

                                                                                                      Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                      University Press Oxford

                                                                                                      Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                      Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                      iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                      Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                      (Saale)

                                                                                                      Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                      Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                      Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                      Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                      Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                      Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                      Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                      Ruprecht

                                                                                                      Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                      Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                      maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                      52

                                                                                                      Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                      Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                      Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                      Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                      Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                      53

                                                                                                      • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                        • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson 1967 Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure

                                                                                                        Nordic Vowel Quantity Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 1131-65

                                                                                                        Hreinn Benediktsson (ed) 1972 The First Grammatical Treatise

                                                                                                        Introduction Text Notes Translation Vocabulary Facsimiles Institute

                                                                                                        of Nordic Linguistics Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2003 Hittite and the Indo-European Verb Oxford University

                                                                                                        Press Oxford

                                                                                                        Jasanoff Jay 2007 From Reduplication to Ablaut The Class VII Strong

                                                                                                        Verbs of Northwest Germanic Historische Sprachfrschung 120241-284

                                                                                                        Joacuten Helgason 1929 Maacutelieth aacute nyacuteja testamenti Odds Gottskaacutelkssonar Hieth

                                                                                                        iacuteslenska fraeligethafjelagieth iacute Kaupmannahoumlfn Copenhagen

                                                                                                        Joumlrundur Hilmarsson 1991 On ēsup2 in Germanic Acta Linguistica Hafnensia

                                                                                                        2333-47

                                                                                                        Katara Pekka 1939 Die urspruumlnglich reduplizierenden Verba im

                                                                                                        Niederdeutschen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Verbalflexion

                                                                                                        Meacutemoires de la Societeacute neacuteophilologique de Helsinki 12 Socieacuteteacute

                                                                                                        neacuteophilologique Helsinki

                                                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 1980 Quantity in Historical Phonology Icelandic and

                                                                                                        Related Cases Cambridge University Press Cambridge

                                                                                                        50

                                                                                                        Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                        Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                        Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                        Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                        Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                        Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                        Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                        de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                        Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                        Copenhagen

                                                                                                        Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                        studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                        altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                        Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                        altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                        beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                        Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                        Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                        51

                                                                                                        Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                        University Press Oxford

                                                                                                        Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                        Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                        iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                        Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                        (Saale)

                                                                                                        Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                        Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                        Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                        Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                        Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                        Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                        Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                        Ruprecht

                                                                                                        Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                        Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                        maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                        52

                                                                                                        Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                        Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                        Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                        Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                        Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                        53

                                                                                                        • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                          • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                          Kristjaacuten Aacuternason 2005 Hljoacuteeth Handboacutek um hljoacuteethfraeligethi og hljoacuteethkerfisfraeligethi

                                                                                                          Iacuteslensk tunga I Almenna boacutekfeacutelagieth Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                          Larsson Ludvig 1891 Ordforraringdet I de aumllsta islaumlnska haringndskrifterna Ph

                                                                                                          Lindstedts Universitets-bokhandel Lund

                                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2000 A Grammar of Moumlethruvallaboacutek

                                                                                                          Leiden University Press Leiden

                                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2004 Lemmatized Index to the Icelandic

                                                                                                          Homily Book Perg 15 4deg in the Royal Library Stockholm Stofnun Aacuterna

                                                                                                          Magnuacutessonar aacute Iacuteslandi Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                          de Leeuw van Weenen Andrea 2009 Alexanders Saga AM 519a 4deg in the

                                                                                                          Arnamagnaelign Collection Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

                                                                                                          Copenhagen

                                                                                                          Lindblad Gustaf 1952 Det islaumlndska accenttaumlcknet En historisk-ortografisk

                                                                                                          studie Gleerup Lund

                                                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1913 Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen besonders in

                                                                                                          altnordischer Zeit Truumlbner Straszligburg

                                                                                                          Noreen Adolf 1923 Altnordische Grammatik I Altislaumlndische und

                                                                                                          altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter

                                                                                                          beruumlcksichtigung des Urnordischen 4th ed Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                          Prokosch Eduard 1939 A Comparative Germanic Grammar Linguistic

                                                                                                          Society of America Philadelphia

                                                                                                          51

                                                                                                          Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                          University Press Oxford

                                                                                                          Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                          Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                          iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                          Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                          (Saale)

                                                                                                          Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                          Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                          Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                          Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                          Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                          Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                          Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                          Ruprecht

                                                                                                          Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                          Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                          maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                          52

                                                                                                          Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                          Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                          Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                          Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                          Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                          53

                                                                                                          • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                            • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                            Ringe Don 2007 From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic Oxford

                                                                                                            University Press Oxford

                                                                                                            Seip Didrik Arup 1954 Palaeligografi B Norge og Island Bonnier Stockholm

                                                                                                            Sigfuacutes Bloumlndal 1923 Iacuteslensk-doumlnsk orethaboacutek (Reykjaviacutek 1920-1924) Hieth

                                                                                                            iacuteslenska boacutekmenntafeacutelag Reykjaviacutek

                                                                                                            Steller Walter 1928 Abriszlig der altfriesischen Grammatik Niemeyer Halle

                                                                                                            (Saale)

                                                                                                            Storm Gustav 1893 Otte brudstykker af Den aeligldste saga om Olav den hellige

                                                                                                            Groslashndahl amp Soslashns Christiania

                                                                                                            Sturtevant Albert Morey 1953 ldquoFurther Old Norse Secondary

                                                                                                            Formationsrdquo Language Vol 29 No 4 457-462 The Linguistic

                                                                                                            Society of America Washington DC

                                                                                                            Torp Alf 1909 Woumlrterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen Dritter Teil

                                                                                                            Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit Goumlttingen Vandehoek amp

                                                                                                            Ruprecht

                                                                                                            Van Coetsem Frans 1956 Das System der starken Verba und die

                                                                                                            Periodisierung im aumllteren Germanischen Noord-hollandsche uitgievers-

                                                                                                            maatschappij Amsterdam

                                                                                                            52

                                                                                                            Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                            Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                            Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                            Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                            Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                            53

                                                                                                            • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                              • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                              Vennemann Theo 1994 Zur Entwicklung der reduplizierenden Verben im

                                                                                                              Germanischen Beitraumlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und

                                                                                                              Literatur 116 Band Niemeyer Tuumlbingen

                                                                                                              Voyles Joseph 1992 Reduplicating Verbs in North-West Germanic

                                                                                                              Lingua 5289-123

                                                                                                              53

                                                                                                              • Hugviacutesindasvieth
                                                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs
                                                                                                                • Ritgereth til MA-proacutefs

                                                                                                                top related