Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Síða 210

208 Janez Oresnik
(3) Stage 1: less, lestu ferr, ferðu fær, færðu
Stage 2: les, lestu fer, ferðu fær, færðu
Stage 3: lest, lestu ferð, ferðu færð, færðu
the short forms less/les, ferr/fer, and fœr did not end in a dental, in
Stage 3 they do. The dental accretion t/ð stems from the corresponding
long 2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms, lestu, ferðu, fœrðu, which have been
clipped to yield lest, jerð, færð. The model for the clipping was pro-
vided by the long and short 2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms of the preterite-
present verbs, of vera and vilja, and by the long and short 2. p. sg. pret.
ind. forms of the strong preterites, whose long dissyllabic forms ended
in -tu, and whose short monosyllabic forms ended in -í, e.g. skaltu and
skalt. In such pairs of long and short forms the long form was con-
sidered basic, and the short form was made from it through the clipping
of the final u: skaltu minus u = skalt. This clipping process was first
generalised to all dissyllabic long 2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms ending in
-tu (except vextu of vaxa), and there arose, e.g., lest from lestu. After
some time the clipping process was further generalised to all dissyllabic
long 2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms ending in -ðu, and there arose, e.g., ferð
from ferðu, fœrð from færðu.
That it is the long forms (e.g. skaltu) that are basic, is corroborated
by the history of the Icelandic imperative singular. Any imperative
singular form had a short and a long form (e.g. kom and komdu) to
begin with. In the further development the long form (e.g. komdu)
prevailed almost completely so that it is now the dominant form of the
imperative singular. This development can only be understood if it is
assumed that the long form of the imperative singular (e.g. komdu) has
been the basic variant of the imperative singular. The basicness of the
long form (e.g. komdu) may be due to its being more explicitly than the
short form (e.g. kom) characterised as a 2. p. sg. (through the suffixed
pronoun þú). I assume that the same relationship between the short
and the long forms obtains in the 2. p. sg. verbal forms outside the
imperative.
The same clipping process took place in Faroese. From the long
2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms such as gertú (official spelling gert tú) of gera
the clipped forms such as gert were made on the analogy of the pairs
of long and short forms in which the short form ended in -t. E.g. on the