Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Síða 88

86
IIREINN BENEDIKTSSON
between [13] and [1] in the North, in such forms as hringla ‘finkle,
rattle’ [hriggla], as opposed to its absence elsewhere ([hriijla] ).34
Besides, many of Guðfinnsson’s investigations were concerned
with the occurrence of phonemes in single words, as in the verhal
forms mentioned above, pret. vóru, kómu for voru, komu, and the
pret. of ri-verbs, e. g. gröri, greri or gréri from gróa. Further, he
examined such cases as höggva vs. högga ‘to hew’, blómgva vs.
blómga ‘to bloom’, rökkva vs. rökva ‘to darken’, víkka vs. víðka ‘to
widen’, undir vs. indir ‘under’, spyrja vs. spurja ‘to ask’, hrœddur
vs. hraddur ‘afraid’, íllur vs. illur ‘bad’, and a number of similar
cases.35 But the results of these investigations have not been
published.
VI
If we examine the present dialect differences from the historic.al
point of view, we see that they are of very different age. Some of
them are comparatively recent, e. g. the change of initial hv- to kv-.
which underlies the present difference between the presence and the
absence of this distinction. The earliest certain evidence of this
change—consisting in the alliteration, in poetry, of ancient hv- and
kv—is from the second half of the eighteenth century.36 Lax
occlusives for the tense ones is also recent. The earliest extensive
evidence of the change implied is from about 1800. This evidence
consists in occasional spellings, in letters from the South, with b, d, g
for p, t, k, showing the identification of the occlusives in intervocalic
,',‘l See, e. g., GuSfinnsson, Breytingar, pp. 22f.
38 Mállýzkur, pp. 117—126.
36 For possible earlier evidence, see, e. g., Bj. K. Þórólfsson, Um íslenskar
orðmyndir á 14. og 15. 'óld (Reykjavík 1925), p. xxxiv; Einarsson, “On Some
Points___,” p. 270. On the trustworthiness of this evidence, see J. Helgason,
“Review of Bj. K. Þórólfsson, Um íslenskar orSmyndir (Reykjavík 1925),” Ar-
kiv för nordisk filologi XLIII (1927), p. 88, and “A Short Remark,” Acta Philo-
logica Scandinavica III (1928), pp. 279f. See also Böðvarsson, “Þáttur ...,” pp.
170f.