Gripla - 01.01.1977, Page 175

MODERN ICELANDIC U-UMLAUT 171
question otherwise are susceptible to u-umlaut; cf. lp. pl. pres. för-um,
skömm-umst —skömm-ustum.
If an ending does not begin with /y/, the u-umlaut generally does
not take place in the stem. Exceptions:
(a) The ending of the definite dative plural of nouns can begin with
o or «; there is -onum and -unum (under the influence of flámæli also
-önum. Cf. Hægstad 1942:11 quoting Rask; Bandle 1956:65-66), e.g.
börn-onum and börn-unum. The ending -onum—-unum behaves in the
same way as the dative plural ending -um as far as u-umlaut is con-
cerned.
(b) In general, the case forms of any Icelandic noun display two
shapes, one with the postpositive article appended, and another without
it. E.g. nom./acc. sg. barn and barn-ið. As far as the u-umlaut is con-
cemed, the longer forms repeat the state of affairs that is found in the
short forms: since there is no umlaut in barn, there is none in barn-ið
either; and since the nom./acc. pl. börn displays u-umlaut, the corre-
sponding definite form has it as well, börn-in. The fact that the -in of
the definite form börn-in begins with /i/, i.e. with a vowel other than
/y/, has no influence upon the distribution of u-umlaut in the noun
form with postpositive article appended to it.
In compound words only those constituents undergo u-umlaut which
are morphologically inflected. Usually only the rightmost constituent,
if any, is so inflected, and therefore is umlauted under the same condi-
tions and in the same way as if it were an independent word; e.g. aðal-
dalur ‘chief valley’, dat. pl. aðal-dölum, not öðul-dölum or the like.
(The hyphen indicates the boundary between the constituents of the
compound.) A list, probably exhaustive, of compound words in which
a non-final constituent is both inflected and undergoes u-umlaut is
given in (23), q.v. (These compounds are sometimes written as two
words, annar hver, etc., yet each is considered one lexical item.) Prob-
ably this state of affairs is just a special case of the constraint that says
that only inflected stems undergo u-umlaut (or ANY kind of umlaut
and ablaut); another special case of this type are adjectivally usea
(indeclinable) present participles such as talandi ‘speaking’, and other
indeclinables, e.g. handlama ‘with paralysed hand or arm’,—For cases
such as sögu-staður ‘historical place’, where sögu- appears to be in-
flected relative to the simplex saga, see par. 1.