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Model ofModern Icelandic Syllable Types 151
c[ð]c ]r]s a, and the fact that the nuclear [r] and the [ð] in the coda
may be transposed suggests that they are in some sense equivalent.
Thus it would evidently be a mistake to dismiss the concept of seg-
ment as not relevant. Rather, it might be assumed that parsing of
a phonological string in terms of segments is also possible, just as
syntactic strings may both be parsed into words and larger consti-
tuents, and syntactic rules may operate in terms of constituents larger
(and smaller?) than words.
It is an open question which type of structure, syllabic or segmental,
should be considered more basic, or whether indeed any ranking of
these aspects of phonological structure is necessary.
A final note is in order on the ontological status of the representa-
tions suggested in the foregoing. This is an attempt at expressing gen-
eralizations concerning the structure of the types of syllable that occur
in Modern Icelandic. This is a relatively ‘abstract’ model representing
‘phonological’ structure, which means that we are dealing with
historically determined organization. The actual phonetic (or other)
conditions that originally contributed to the formation of the patterns
are no longer as directly relatable to the ‘abstract’ structures as they
presumably once were (cf. Árnason 1981).
The representations generated by this model are not assumed to
represent any sort of psychological reality. The purpose of the study
is merely to suggest a point of view that may be useful in the search
for understanding of phonological organization in a language like Ice-
landic.
REFERENCES
Árnason, Kristján. 1977a. Preaspiration in Modern Icelandic: Phonetics and Phono-
logy. In: Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni (ed. by Einar G. Pétursson
and Jónas Kristjánsson), pp. 495-504. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík.
— . 1977b. Quantity in Icelandic: a Historical and Comparative Study. Ph.D. Thesis.
University of Edinburgh, Dept. of Linguistics.
— . 1980. Quantity in Historical Phonology: Icelandic and Related Cases. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
— . 1981. A Diachronic Look at the Syllable: the Case of Icelandic. Journal of Lin-
guistics 17:179-188.
Bernódusson, Helgi. 1978. Breytileg hljóðskipun. Mímir 26:10-15.