Orð og tunga - 01.06.2006, Blaðsíða 93

Haraldur Bernharðsson: Gás, gæs og Gásir, Gásar
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contrast, the singular is unmarked and the plural is marked (general
markedness); therefore these words did not undergo the same devel-
opment as the word for goose.
As discussed in section 4.2, the place name appears in nom./acc.
plur. as Gásir already in the fifteenth century and in later sources the
form Gásar is also in evidence, as well as the presumably masculine
acc. plur. Gási and Gæsi. The development of the place name there-
fore differs from the development of the common noxrn on at least
three points: (1) the root vowel á has been generalized, replacing æ
in nom./acc. plur.; (2) the place name not only adds the new plu-
ral morpheme -ir but also -ar; and (3) the place name also can ap-
pear as masculine. These changes, it is argued, also are due to lo-
cal markedness. Typically the nominative case is unmarked and the
oblique cases marked. As discussed by Manczak (1958:388-401) and
Tiersma (1982:843), place names, however, frequently are unmarked
in the locative case; in Icelandic this is the dative case. Accordingly,
the dat. plur. Gásum is the basic form in the paradigm of the place
name. This explains why, in the place name, the root vowel á has been
extended (from the dative) throughout the paradigm. Moreover, the
dative form is indeterminate with respect to gender and inflectional
class, since in Icelandic the dat. plur. has the same morpheme, -um, in
all three genders, across all inflectional classes. Therefore, the ambigu-
ous dat. plur. form Gásum is prone to reinterpretation with respect to
gender and inflectional class. This explains why it has sometimes been
reanalyzed as masculine, as well as why it has shifted between in-
flectional classes, as is manifest in the addition of the nom./acc. plur.
morpheme -ar, beside -ir.
Keywords:
historical morphology, analogy, markedness, place names
Haraldur Bernharðsson
Hugvísindastofnun
Nýja-Garði
Háskóla íslands
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
haraldr@hi.is