Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1982, Qupperneq 309

Ritdómar
307
ments which disregard word boundaries (as in the case of the compound just mentioned)
not only fail to rationalise anything but introduce more questions and doubts, al-
though it is, of course, conceivable that morphological and phonological boundaries do
not coincide. But onc whould like to see some independent evidence. Note that the
traditional account of the short diphthong in þjóðvísa is quite simple: the diphthong
is short because it is followed by two consonants.
This brings us to the second major failure of the account of length phenomena in
Icelandic (both traditional and more recent). Despite superficial differences, both the
traditional description and Arnason view the length rule as a basically mechanical pro-
cedure, a simple-minded lengthening before no more than one consonant with the ex-
ceptional clusters only slightly obscuring the picture. Unfortunatly, the lengthening is
not the phonological simpleton that descriptions make of it but quite an ,,intelligent“
rulc, I think; its dependence on the number of consonants is only a small aspect of
its conditioning. It seems to bc crucially connected with the derivational morphology
of the language since compounds evince a much more varied pattern of quantity alter-
nations than simple lexemes. It is quite possible, as Arnason suggests, that the mediating
factor is the stress, but identifying the issue is one thing and providing an exhaustive
picture of it is another. I wish that instead of Chapter 3, Árnason had devoted his
considerable skill and linguistic sensitivity to a more insightful discussion of Icelandic
compounding and the length phenomena as dependent on it. The survey of length and
quantity in a couple of related languages makes interesting reading but it can iiardly
count as a'n in-depth study of complex phenomena extending for centuries in different
dialectal areas. It is to be regretted that having at his disposal, both as a native speaker
and a qualified linguist, the complex data of Modern Icelandic, Árnason decided that
,,the whole problem of compounds in Modern Icelandic is too complicated to be solved
here“ (p. 48). Recognising „many types and degrees of compounds in Icelandic" (p.
44) or ,,a scale of closeness of connection between constituents of compound words"
(p. 45) might be a good starting point for an in-depth discussion of a real problem,
with rich data easily available and a variety of hypotheses waiting to be tested. Árnason
does nothing of this sort; a hasty discussion of a possible way of dealing with some
types of compounds (pp. 44-51) results in a new version of the length rule as consisting
of two subparts (a lengthening and a shortening one), given the condition of a stressed
vowel. The rule is then said to possess ,,the character of an output condition; that
•s, whatever the input, the output conforms to the rules for distribution of length"
(p. 51). Whatever the length rule is, it is not an output condition, if only because
there are numerous exceptions to it, some of which will be discussed below. Árnason
probably means that the length rule is basically the same in all types of compound
words and that apparent exceptions can be accounted for by reference to a scale of
closeness of connection, but then, of course, one must know something more about
this scale.
Part of thc difficulty in dealing with the Icelandic Iength phenomena, at least if one
ls not a native speaker of the language, is that the same words are often transcribed
differently by different authors. For example, admitting that vocalic length fluctuates
•n some compound words, Orésnik & Pétursson (1977:156, ftn. 1) claim however that
'n ,,other words only the long vowel is possible as in villegur ‘wise' or only the short