Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1984, Qupperneq 56

54 Ásta, Gísli og Þórólfur
Tafla IV. Fœðingar- og dvalarstaður
Dvalar- FæðingarstaSur
staður Reykjavík Landsbyggð Alls
58 2 60
Reykjavík 96.7 3.3 31.1
(63.7) (2.0)
53 100 133
Landsbyggð 24.8 75.2 68.9
(36.3) (98.1)
Alls 51 102 193
47.2 52.6 100.0
SUMMARY
There has been some tendency to substitute dative for accusative in the case of
some common impersonal verbs. It has sometimes been suggested that this dative
substitution (þágufallssýki) is restricted to the urban areas on the south-west corner
of Iceland. Most students have implied, however, that dative is a random pheno-
menon unrelated to other social variables such as sex, education and social class.
Traditional research on dialect differences in Icelándic has emphasized geographi-
cal discontinuities while ignoring the role of social variables. Some aspects of pro-
nunciation have, for instance, been shown to vary within regions, but few students
of language have examined the extent to which such variations are correlated with
education and social class. The present paper provides a statistical analysis of
empirical data which has already been reported by Ásta Svavarsdóttir (see íslenskt
mál 1982:19-62). Ásta Svavarsdóttir used a special test which was designed to
inVestigate the extent of dative substitution. The test was administered to about
200 11 year old children in 11 schools in different parts of the country. Here we
test the hypothesis that dative substitution is distributed at random. First we ex-
amine the correlations between dative substitution on the one hand and on the
other social class, residence, sex and educational success. Then we examine the
internal relationships between the latter variables and their respective importance
for the explanation of variance in dative substitution.
Our analysis demonstrates that dative substitution is significantly correlated with
three of the four variables: The lower the social class the more frequent is the
dative substitution (r= -f.38). Dative substitution is less frequent in the Reykjavík
area than in the rural districts. And dative substitution is negatively correlated with
educational ability and performance as evaluated by teachers (r= -t-.48). Boys use