Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Page 81

icelandic dialectology: methods and results
79
However, the most extensive investigation of Icelandic dialect
differences is the one undertaken about twenty years ago by Björn
Guðfinnsson. It is obvious that the smallness of a community like the
Icelandic one—the present population is only about 175000—offers
certain advantages to the descriptive analyst in linguistics, as well as
to the scholar in other branches of the social sciences. Therefore it
was no hopeless task that Guðfinnsson began at that time—-a time
when the population was only about 120000—when, in order to make
a comprehensive survey of the dialect differences in pronunciation,
he set out to make an exhaustive investigation of a certain age group,
proposing to examine the pronunciation of every individual of this
group. He chose school-children of ten to thirteen years of age—i. e.
people who are now between twenty-nine and thirty-two—and he
examined about 6500 children or close to 90% of this group. In addi-
tion, he examined about 3500 other persons, also, in part, children of
various age groups, so that, altogether, he examined, in more or less
detail, the pronunciation of about 10.000 individuals, that is one out
of every twelve inhabitants of the country at that time. However,
owing to Dr. Guðfinnsson’s premature death in 1950, the results of
his investigation have as yet been published in part only.22
Some points in Guðfinnsson’s methodology will seem surprising to
the scholar in the well-established, tradition-bound West-European
dialectology. In part, this is probably due to the lack of contact with
foreign dialectology and to Guðfinnsson’s specific attitude to these
questions, which he approached from the point of view of the teach-
ing of the native language and the preserving of its. pronunciation.
It is characteristic that the first financial support for this under-
taking was an appropriation, in the budget of the State Broadcasting
Corporation, destined for ‘purification of speech’.23 The ultimate
and Germanic Philology XXXI (1932), pp. 537—572; “Um mál á Fljótsdals-
liéraði og AustfjörSum 1930,” Skírnir CVI (1932), pp. 33—54.
22 Mállýzkur, Vol. I (Reykjavík 1946). On the number of informants, see
pp. 90-99.
23 Ibid., p. 8. See also p. 82.