Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1979, Page 246

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Janez Oresnik
He then combined the notions NEUTRALIZATION RULE and DE-
RIVED FORM/INPUT into the universal (la). The universal predicts
that the í-to-j rule applies in halusi and vesi, but not in koti.
2. Turning now to the modern Icelandic material, I first present a case
in which Kiparsky’s universal (la) as it now stands seems to reveal its
explanatory power. In modern Icelandic there is a phonological rule of
the following form:
(3) v þ / Y_1 j * J
I.e. any /v/ is replaced by /þ/ if immediately preceded by a vowel and
immediately followed by /1/ + vowel or by /1/ + word boundary. —
The environment of the rule may have been less constrained earlier
than now, in view of such doublets as gen. sg. fífls (of fífl [-þj] ‘fool’),
pronounced with [-vls] or [-þ]s] according to Blöndal 1920-24 s.v. fífl',
or the environment of the rule has always been as now, and all cases of
[-þls] are due to analogical levelling. Fortunately, this problem is not
relevant in the present context.
Examples: djöfull [-v-] ‘devil’ and hreyfill [-v-] ‘motor’ (neologism)
lose their respective u and i in certain case forms, whereupon their /v/
and /1/ abut on each other, and rule (3) applies. The derivations of the
nominative plural proceed as shown in (4), q.v.
(4)
vowel syncope
v-*þ
^jœvYl + ar
^jœvlar
(Ijœþlar
djöflar
(h)reiv + il + ar
(h)reivlar
(h)reiþlar
hreyflar
Examples such as djöfull—djöflar and hreyfill—hreyflar show that
the altemation /v/—/þ/ found in inflectional paradigms is alive, and
therefore has to be accounted for by rule (3). In examples such as afl
[aþlj ‘strength, force’, on the other hand, in which [Ijl] or [1J] is realised
in all the forms of their respective inflectional paradigms, the result of
the historical process has been lexicalised. Because of the many lexi-
calised examples, rule (3) is a neutralisation rule in Kiparsky’s termi-
nology.
Consider now the word family consisting of the noun rövl [rœvl]