Gripla - 01.01.1977, Page 181

MODERN ICELANDIC U-UMLAUT
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least in the singular. E.g. /skjöld/ ‘shield’. The morphological rule /ö/
->/ a/ would produce a in the genitive singular. I dare not state an
opinion on the situation in the plural of these nouns.
/ö/ is very likely the basic vowel in the type söfnuður. The morpho-
logical rule /ö/->/a/ introduces a into the gen. sg./pl. safnaðar,
safnaða.
/ö/ may be the basic vowel in the weak feminine nouns, and the
morphological rule /ö/->/a/ operate in the nominative singular and
in the genitive plural (nom. sg. saga, gen. pl. sagna).9
Moreover, when the originally neuter noun válað ‘misery’ appeared temporarily
as feminine in the New Testament 1540 and Guðbrandsbiblía 1584 (see Helgason
1929:401; Bandle 1956:201), it did not umlaut its /a/ in, say, its dative singular:
NT af volad sinni, GB volat, not volöð or voluð. Similarly mann-líkan ‘idol’,
normally neuter, appears as feminine in Guðbrandsbiblía 1584 (Bandle ibidem),
but does not undergo u-umlaut in the nominative singular: ein Mannlijkan, not
-ön, -un.
Nouns such as art above undergo u-umlaut in the dative plural, if they have
plural forms at all. E.g. dragt ‘coat and skirt’, dat. pl. drögt-um. The contrast be-
tween umlautless singular and umlauted dative plural follows if a one-stem lexical
representation with the root vowel /a/ is posited.
The genitive singular /ö/—>/a/ rule is occasionally dropped, with the result that
/ö/ is realized on the phonetic level even in the genitive singular. This can be
documented with historical facts. E.g. Bandle 1956:38 has culled the following two
genitive singular case forms from Guðbrandsbiblía 1584: Ves0lldar (normal gen.
sg. vesald-ar, of vesöld ‘misery’) and styrifHldar (normal gen. sg. styrjald-ar, of
styrjöld ‘war’). Further, the genitive singular of the feminine proper name Ólöf,
normally Ólaf-ar, appears as Ólöf-ar in the titles of post-Reformation folk-songs,
see Helgason 1962:176, 1965:105.
9 The postulation of the rule /ö/—>/a/ in the nominative singular of the femi-
nine weak nouns helps to explain the peculiar development of the words flaga and
amaba in Modern Icelandic. The weak noun fluga ‘fly’ became flöga in the town
of Hafnarfjörður (11 kms from Reykjavík) owing to flámæli, and the paradigm
nom. sg. flöga, oblique sg. flögu was changed—presumably under the influence of
the rule /ö/—>/a/ in the nominative singular—to the paradigm nom. sg. flaga,
oblique sg. flögu. (The facts were given in personal communication from Jón
Helgason, April 1975.) Another example of the same kind is the learned natural-
ized noun amöba ‘amoebe’, which has developed a side form in the nominative
singular, amaba, again presumably under the influence from the rule /ö/—>/a/.
Baldur Jónsson has drawn my attention to the word tölva ‘computer’, originally
made by Sigurður Nordal on the analogy of völva ‘prophetess’. Instead of tölva,
talva (oblique singular tölvu) is now often used, a form which seems to be due to
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