Gripla - 01.01.1977, Blaðsíða 156

152
GRIPLA
1. The label U-UMLAUT belongs to historical grammar. However, in
this descriptive study it will be used as a convenient name for the vowel
alternations /a—ö/ and /a—y/ which are found in many morpho-
logical paradigms of Modern Icelandic, and which have mostly arisen
through the prehistorical process of u-umlaut. An example is gamall
‘old’ versus nom. sg. f. and nom./acc. pl. n. gömul. From the descriptive
point of view the limitation of the scope of the present paper to just
these alternations, in morphological paradigms only, is arbitrary. What
remains outside are other vocalic alternations and
(a) Inflected words displaying no u-umlaut alternations in their
morphological paradigms. If such inflected words contain, for instance,
non-alternating /ö/, as in (la), q.v., that segment is here assumed to
have been lexicalized.
(b) Uninflected words. In this context there is of course no point in
keeping the /ö/’s and /y/’s which are due to pre-historical u-umlaut
apart from the /ö/’s and /y/’s of other origin. Thus in (lb), q.v., the
/ö/ of mjög is from older o, the latter from a by u-umlaut, according to
the most probable conception of breaking before u, see Nielsen 1957:
38-42. Sjö is from older sjau.
(1) (a) Inflected words: mör ‘suet’
Böðvar masculine given name
fölur ‘pale’
(b) Uninflected words: mjög ‘very’
sjö ‘seven’
(c) Uninflected constituents of compound words:
böggla-afgreiðsla ‘parcel post delivery’
dökk-grœnn ‘dark green’
fjöl- ‘multi-, poly-’
sögu-staður ‘historical place’
(d) Derivational paradigms:
fara ‘go, travel’ vs. förull ‘rambling’
saga ‘history’ sögulegur ‘historical’
and to Baldur Jónsson and Stefán Karlsson, who have read an earlier version of
the paper and suggested improvements. All errors are my own.