Gripla - 01.01.1977, Page 164

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GRIPLA
(10) Examples of nouns in -ari
bakari ‘baker’, dat. pl. bökurum,
fiðlari ‘fiddler’ fiðlurum
kennari ‘teacher’ kennurum
dómari ‘judge’ dómurum
kjallari ‘cellar’ kjöllurum
cf. baka ‘bake’
fiðla ‘violin’
kenna ‘teach’
dómur ‘judgement’
The u-umlaut alternation shows up in the dative plural, see the central
column of (10), and represents Initial umlaut if the main morphological
cut is just before -um\ the dative plural is then morphologically /bakar
+ Ym/. However, since so many Icelandic nouns end in -ari, and-or
because of their synchronic word-derivational ties with their respective
bases such as those in the rightmost column of (10), it is possible that
at least some Icelanders analyze bakari etc. as /bak + ari/ etc., making
the stem monosyllabic and thus not subject to Initial umlaut. For an
example of this analysis see (11). Under this analysis the nouns in -ari
(11) nom. sg. bak + ari pl. bak + arar
acc. bak + ara bak + ara
dat. bak + ara bak + YrYm
gen. bak + ara bak + ara
form their own declension class, different from the declension of other
masculine weak nouns.
Speaking against Initial umlaut in the morphological paradigm of the
an'-nouns are lexical items such as kristall-ari ‘crystallizer’, whose dative
plural is kristöllurum, not kristullurum, which makes sense if the main
morphological cut is after 11, /kristall + YrYm/; in that event it can be
argued that kristöllurum displays the expected Final umlaut. However,
this argument is weak, because examples such as kristöllurum are few
in number and the type of their umlaut could be due to the influence
of their word-derivational bases, cf. the verb kristalla ‘crystallize’,
whose third person plural preterite is kristölluðu. Or it could be argued
that kristöllurum is simply an exceptional form.
The non-derived kjallari ‘cellar’ (and meistari ‘master’, marmari
‘marble’, keisari ‘emperor’, etc.) has joined the derived nouns in -ari
just as mánuður has joined those in -uður.
The deverbative feminine nouns in -un, mostly nomina actionis, form