Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 197

JANEZ ORESNIK
On the Dental Accretion
in Certain 2nd p. sg. Verbal Forms of Icelandic, Faroese,
and the Old West Germanic Languages
0. Summary
Certain 2. p. sg. pres. ind. verbal forms of Icelandic, of Faroese, and
°f the old West Germanic languages have developed a dental accretion,
e- g. Icelandic les-t, fer-ð of lesa, fara, Faroese ger-t, býr-t of gera,
búgva, Old English gœs-t of gcin, Old High German tuos-t of tuon. Such
forms arose from the corresponding forms containing the suffixed per-
sonal pronoun þú, tú, thu, du, through the removal of the final vowel,
e- g. Icelandic lestu minus u gave lest. Evidence for this comes from
the history of the Icelandic imperative singular.
Section 1 deals with the origin of the modern Icelandic 2. p. sg. pres.
md. and imperative singular forms ending in a dental, e.g. 2. p. lest,
ferð, imp. kond, takt. Section 2 discusses parallel phenomena in Faroese
and in the old West Germanic languages. In section 3 the paper is
summed up.1
1.
1.1
This section discusses the origin of the modern Icelandic 2. p. sg.
Pres. ind. forms such as lest of lesa, ferð of fara, and fœrð of fá. The
oldest paradigms of the present indicative singular of the three verbs
were those given here sub (1), q.v. (spelling modernised and normal-
ised): (1) 1. les fer fæ
2. less, lestu ferr, ferðu fær, færðu
3. less ferr fær
Every 2. p. sg. verbal form of Icelandic has two morphological vari-
^1 My thanks are due to Höskuldur Þráinsson for important remarks, to Magnús
Pétursson for help with §1.2, and to Margaret G. Davis for the correction of my
English.