Gripla - 01.01.1977, Page 166

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GRIPLA
lysis exemplified under (13) is correct, the pöntun nouns form their
own declensional class.
A further alternative analysis of pöntun takes into account the pos-
sibility that /ö/, not /a/, is the basic root vowel in the morphological
paradigm of the pöntun nouns, at least in the singular. In the plural, a
morphological rule would change /ö/ to /a/, and another rule would
change /a/ back to /ö/ in the dative plural; e.g. nom. sg./pönt + yii/,
nom. pl. /pant + anir/, dat. pl. /pant + ynym/ /pönt + YnYm/.
There is a complication here, in that those pöntun nouns derived from
verbal stems whose vowel is /ö/, do not change that /ö/ into /a/ in
the plural. Example: af-höfðun ‘decapitation’, nom. pl. af-höfðanir, not
-hafðanir. Since nouns like -höfðun are rare, it could be postulated that
they are exceptions from the plural /ö/->/a/ rule. Altematively, there
may exist a language universal saying that derivatives must not display
more variation in their morphological paradigms than their respective
word-derivational bases. Thus, since -höfðun is derived from afhöfða
‘decapitate’ (and the latter from af + höfuð ‘head’), in whose morpho-
logical paradigm /ö/ does not alternate with anything else, even -höfð-
un cannot display /ö/—>/a/. A third solution is outlined in par. 5.
Beside the feminine deverbative nouns in -un there are quite a few
nouns in -an, also mostly nomina actionis. (In older times the nouns in
-an were an open set. Most have now become im-nouns.) For examples
(some repeated here from Kress 1963:85) see (14). These lexical items
are unusual in that they do not display any u-umlaut in the singular,
(14) Examples of feminine nouns in -an
ólyfjan ‘poison, stench’, cf. lyf ‘medicine’
angan ‘fragrance’ anga ‘shed fragrance’
liðan ‘state of health’ líða ‘pass, feel’
although they contain strong feminine stems, whereas in the plural, in
the rare cases when that number is used at all, -unum appears in the
dative case, e.g. ólyfjunum, with Initial umlaut. If the stem is taken to
end in an, these nouns must be made exceptions to the requirement that
u-umlaut apply at least in the non-genitive singular of strong feminine
nouns. (Cf. par. 4.) On the other hand, there is no problem with the
u-umlaut here if it is assumed, as it is in par. 5 below, that there is
no /a/ /ö, y/ rule in the singular of the strong feminine nouns,
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