Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1982, Side 310

308
Ritdómar
vowel is possible as in vitlaus ‘crazy’“. The second word, or actually its first element,
is given both the long and the short vowel by Einarsson (1967:489) and by Böðvarsson
(1962:866);' Arnason (p. 44) has a short vowel herc but a long diphthong in the second
part whcrc Böðvarsson has a short diphthong and Einarsson a half-long onc!; Likcwise
thc prefix mis- (e. g.: mislíka ‘dislike’, mislitur ‘vari-colourcd’) has a long vowel in
Einarsson’s textbook but a short one in Böðvarsson’s dictionary. Even worse, in Böð-
varsson’s dcscription (1962:951), diphthongs ending in [i] are claimed to be somewhat
shortcncd before [j], and bogi ‘bow’ is transcribed as [boiji] while the same word is
transcribed by Einarsson (1967:9) as [boi:ji[ with the comment that [jj has a lcngthening
cffect.
Coming back to Arnason’s intcrpretation, let us note that his length rule crucially
dcpends upon stress. The rule assigning stress is formulated as follows (p. 45):
Primary strcss falls on the first syllable of cvcry word and a secondary stress falls
on evcry second syllable, counting from there, except when the word is a com-
pound. If the word is a compound, then a secondary strcss falls on the first syllable
of cvcry ncw constituent of the compound.
It is quite obvious from his examples (pp. 49-50) that by stress as rclevant to the length
rulc, Árnason means not only primary but also secondary. Unfortunately, we are not
shown how this is supposed to work, neither for simple words nor for compounds.
The word for ‘calendar’ and its gen. pl. dcf. form are assigned stress as almanak and
almanakanna respectivcly (p. 44), hcnce onc would expect the vowels bearing secondary
stress to be lengthened but they are not long: *alman[a:]k, *alman[a:]kann[a:]. Some-
thing more is clearly needed here — even if one admits that ,,we are not talking in
absolute tcrms“ (p. 49), but this Árnason does not discuss. Similary, if compounding
does not include derivational suffixation, thcn e. g. duglegur ‘diligent' should bc assigned
stress and length as *dugleg[\:]r (unless some details are added to the description).
True compounds are equally problematic. Let us takc hiultaka ‘participation’ and
follow Árnason’s proccdures (pp. 49-50). The underlying /#hlut##taka#/ by stress
assignment, boundary weakening and stress adjustment becomes/#hlut#taka#/. Leng-
thcning produces/#hlu:t#ta:ka#/and syllabification yields/#hlu:tt$a:ka#/. Since this
form violates the output condition, the length rule applies again deriving/#hlutta:ka#/
with the first vowel short (and preaspiration?) and the second long (at least it will
bc lengthcned.) Although the pronunciation of the word may vary somewhat. I do
not think that this is what we get. Eithcr the first vowel is long and the second short
or we get a short vowel in the first syllable followed by preaspiration and then a short
(unstressed) second vowel.
The compounds búmaður ‘experienced farmer’ and búkona ‘good housewife’ should
1 In what follows, I will, unless otherwise stated, be relying on Árni Böðvarsson’s
careful phonetic transcription as found in the Icelandic-Russian Dictionary (Bérkov and
Böövarsson 1962). Böðvarsson’s outline of Icelandic grammar mentioned bclow is ap-
pcnded to that dictionary.
2 The half-length of segments is undoubtedly a late-phonetic phenomcnon which I
will disregard in what follows.