Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 53

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Lengd íslenskra samhljóða: Vitoð ér enn — eða hvat?
Sveinn Bergsveinsson. 1940. Lautklassen und Lautklassenschrift in der Phono-
metrie. Archiv fiir vergleichende Phonetik 3-4:97-104.
—. 1941. Grundfragen der islándischen Satzphonetik. Einar Munksgaard, Kopen-
hagen.
Zwirner, Eberhard, & Kurt Zwirner. 1936. Grundfragen der Phonometrie. Phono-
metrische Forschungen AI. Berlin.
SUMMARY
In the first half of this paper, the most important studies on quantity in Icelandic
are reviewed and compared. Stefán Einarsson (1927) was the first phonetician to
do extensive instrumental work on Icelandic speech sounds. He found a consider-
able difference in duration (average 3:5—1:2) between (phonologically) short and
long (or geminate) consonants. Sveinn Bergsveinsson’s (1941) measurements are
not quite comparable because of his theoretical basis (the „Phonometrie"), but it
ts concluded here, nevertheless, that his results do not speak against those of
Einarsson. Garnes’ (1974) results also agree with Einarsson’s; although her figures
are lower, the proportions are similar.
Magnús Pétursson (1974a,b, etc.) gets quite a different result. He finds no
significant (i. e., not more than 3 cs, see Lehiste 1970:11-17) difference between
(phonologically) short and long consonants (/r/ excluded). This is only valid for
the subjects from Southern Iceland; for Pétursson’s Northern Icelandic subjects
the proportions between short and long consonants are similar to Einarsson’s and
Garnes’. But Pétursson maintains that his results for the Southern Icelandic
speakers are supported by those of Bergsveinsson and Garnes. It is concluded
here, however, that his interpretation of their results cannot be right. In a later
study (1978a) Pétursson also gets the same results for Southern Icelandic subjects
as for the Northern Icelandic subjects in his former study.
In the second half of this paper, the author presents the outcome of his own
spectrographic measurements. These show a considerable difference (average 3:5)
m duration between (phonologically) short and long stops. It is concluded that
these results agree with those of Einarsson (1927) and Garnes (1974), and also
with Pétursson’s later (1978a) results. The subjects reported on here are both from
Northern and Southern Iceland, but nothing in the present measurements seems to
indicate that quantity is a dialectal feature in Icelandic, as Pétursson (esp. 1978d)
and Oresnik & Pétursson (1977) have claimed. The final section of the paper is
devoted to some considerations on the phonological interpretation of quantity in
Icelandic.