Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 91

HÖSKULDUR ÞRÁINSSON og KRISTJÁN ÁRNASON
Phonological Variation
in 20th Century Icelandic
O* * Introduction
For more than a decade now we have been collaborating on an
Icelandic dialect project. More specifically, this is a project dealing
with phonological variation in 20th century Icelandic. The puipose of
this paper is to give an overview of this project, describe its purpose,
say why we think it is interesting, and mention a few of the results.1
The organization of the paper is as follows: In Section 1 we describe
some of the different interests involved in dialect studies in general and
Icelandic dialect studies in particular and try to explain the nature of
'he major dialectal studies undertaken in Iceland, including our own.
Fi Section 2 we give an overview of phonological dialects (or phono-
l°gical variation) in Icelandic. Section 3 outlines some sociolinguistic
^nd linguistic (or structural) accounts of the distribution and spreading
This paper was originally read at an intemational seminar on Icelandic linguistics
* amræður um íslensk málvísindi) at the University of Iceland in June 1990. It was
asically intended as an overview for non-Icelanders and hence we have decided to
Publish it here in English. We would like to thank the audience at the seminar and
e editor of this joumal for useful comments. We should also like to thank those
have worked in our project through the years, collecting and transcribing data.
e same goes for those who have helped us with statistical analyses or computer
adaptation of the data. Special thanks go to principals of schools in various school
lstncts of Iceland for allowing us to interview their students. All these people are too
numerous to enumerate here, but we hope to be able to mention most of them in a
U10re comprehensive report on the project. — The research reported on in this paper
as been supported by The Icelandic Science Fund, The University Research Fund, the
mistry of Education, and the Linguistic Institute of the University of Iceland. Special
anks also go to Þorsteinn G. Indriðason of the Linguistic Institute, who has been in
arge of the day-to-day business of the project the past few years, and to Guðvarður
ar Gannlaugsson, who had a similar role before him.
Islenskt mál 14
(1992), 89-128. © 1992 íslenska málfrœðifélagið, Reykjavik.